


Hogwarts Psychiatric

by GreyscaleCourtier



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Doctor Who, Harry Potter - Fandom, Homestuck, Merlin (TV), Supernatural, The Hunger Games
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Doctors, Gen, I don't know how much i need to tag it's a damn mental asylum, It's literally set in a mental hospital, Medication, Mental Institutions, Mention of Child Abuse, Mention of substance abuse, Panic Attacks, Suicide Attempt, asylum AU, completely inaccurate depictions of proceedings in mental health facilities, mention of self harm, multifandom - Freeform, oh god such a massive crossover, psychopathic character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:50:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyscaleCourtier/pseuds/GreyscaleCourtier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are The Doctor. You're in charge of Ward 4 at Hogwarts Psychiatric Facility - the big sign outside Ward 4 reads "Psychologically Dysfunctional and Delusional," and that's exactly who your patients are. You haven't really had any problems... until they threatened to shut down the ward.</p><p>You have one month to prove you aren't a failure of a Doctor.</p><p>((on hiatus until further notice))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ward 4

Sometimes, you like your job.

But then Amelia Pond starts biting you, and you wish you’d gone to optometry school instead.

“Amelia, we’ve talked about this,” you tell her. You’re quite proud of how level and calm your voice is while her teeth are clamped on your arm.

The 22-year-old lets go just long enough to shout at you. “No leaving! Raggedy Man isn’t going to let you leave!” She goes for your other arm, but you extract yourself from her room and shut the door behind you.

Amelia Pond has dissociative identity disorder; in layman’s terms, she has imaginary friends. Often, those “friends” become quite insistent in their desires. Raggedy Man has been a recurring theme her whole life, and you doubt it’ll ever go away. You don’t mind. Amelia is usually quite a sweetheart, and you enjoy your ever-lively sessions with her, but today you have a board meeting to get to.

You meet Nurse Williams in the dispensary. “Rory, Amelia’s biting again,” you announce. “Did she take yesterday’s meds?”

Rory keeps filling out paperwork. “Nope. She also refused to eat anything but yogurt and threw up in her bed. Also, Azula had a panic attack because she thought the smoke alarms had dead batteries, and Marlin recited Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from memory very loudly at six o’clock this morning, but what else is new.” He taps a few keys on his laptop. Your ward has its own computer, but that dinosaur is so slow Rory usually brings his own.

“Is Marlin having a lucid day?” You glance out into the common area, but Marlin is just sitting by the window as usual, mumbling gibberish to himself. The other patients are ignoring him; you’ll need to address that at the next group session. You know they don’t avoid the new ones out of malice – they’re just wary of anything new. They’re like children. (Sometimes you secretly call them your children. What can you say? You’re a lonely guy.)

“Not really, but I think it’s more a side effect of the antidepressants than anything.”

“All right. I’ve got to run, call me if there’s a Situation.”

Rory glances up. “What kind of Situation? Like if Tony tries to communicate with the TV again, or if Castiel tries to smite someone with his ‘holy power,’ or…”

“If it looks like there’ll be significant property damage, call me. Anything less and the board just won’t get it.”

“Right. Have fun with the suits, Doctor. See you tomorrow.” Rory goes back to organizing the medication schedule.

You’re almost to the door without being spotted by any of the patients milling around in the common room when a blurry figure streaks past you. An instant later, Anthony Stark slams against the door and throws his arms in front of it. “Ha! You can’t leave!” he shouts. “I locked the door! With my robot powers!”

Tony is a nineteen-year-old special case. Sometimes you doubt he belongs here at all. The sign above the ward’s entrance clearly reads “Psychologically Dysfunctional and Delusional,” and you think Tony is really just a spoiled rich kid who got lost in his lonely childhood games. You don’t believe he honestly thinks he’s a cyborg with the ability to talk to computers, but Tony’s Rich And Famous Father refuses to check him out, so here he stays. You don’t mind. At least it keeps the kid out of the drugs-and-booze, Paris Hilton-esque lifestyle so typical of famous children. Here, he’s growing up out of the spotlight, though obviously not in the most ideal way.

“Tony, I have to get to a meeting,” you say patiently. “I have a master key, remember? I can override the door anyway. Scoot.”

He frowns, but steps aside, waving his arm at the keypad as he does. “There, I unlocked it for you. But only this once!”

“Thank you very much, Tony.” You really shouldn’t humor him, but he takes his “powers” so seriously that it’s hard to contradict him sometimes. “Have you seen Miss Everdeen today?”

“Katy? Yeah, she’s around here somewhere.” He shrugs. “She isn’t really friendly.”

“Well, she’s had some tough times. Just keep being nice to her, okay? She’s only eighteen, and she’ll need a friend her own age when she’s open to the idea.”

Tony nods amicably and wanders off to talk to Harry, who keeps mumbling “Accio” at random objects. You shake your head and scratch at your stubble – you forgot to shave again today. Sometimes you wish you didn’t have so many young patients, but that’s the curse of being a Doctor – you can’t decide which people need your help. And if you could, you shouldn’t be a Doctor anymore.

You lock the door behind you and head up to the Corporate floor.


	2. Terminated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> whoa there sure are a lot of villainous board members in this hospital ahahha

“Terminated?” you repeat in shock.

Chairman Rassilon looks uncomfortable. Thomas Riddle looks entirely unconcerned. Bella Treixes smirks down at her low-cut top. Coriolanus Snow examines his fingernails.

“You’re terminating me?” you say again. It’s starting to sink past your numbness. “But… the ward patients all know me. Another therapist will just shut them off…”

The newest board member interrupts. You think his name is Jack Something. “Doctor, we’re relocating the rest of your ward. It’s a money hole.”

“It’s their home!” you protest. “Next to no one in that ward gets visited. They only have each other! You can’t just uproot them!”

Jack shrugs. “Yeah, well. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“Mr. Noir, please.” Riddle waves him down. “Doctor, you must understand. This is for the good of the hospital. At its full capacity, your ward takes in… what? Fifteen patients?” He glances down at his folder. “Oh, apologies. Nine patients, as of present.”

“Nine _people._ Nine sick people!”

“Nine sick people who aren’t getting better!” Bella snaps.

Silence falls on the table.

Bella regains her temper and continues in that sickly-sweet, patronizing manner she has. “Doctor, your patients don’t get better. They stay in that ward until they get relocated, or die, or their court-mandated sentence is up. Your patients refuse their medication and run wild with their delusions!”

Morgan Pendragon speaks up. “Doctor, we understand that you’re attached to your patients. But you do realize you’re not _supposed_ to, don’t you?”

“I’m only attached to them as much as any doctor should be…”

Snow’s fist comes down hard on the table. “You don’t act like a doctor!” he shouts. “You’ve set up a happy little home with a bunch of nuts, and you don’t even _try_ to help them anymore!”

Ruby Damien cuts in. “You encourage their delusions, Doctor. You let them break rules. Your ward is an embarrassment. To us.” She reapplies her too-bold lipstick, successfully looking bored with the entire situation.

You feel helpless. “So you’re not getting good press? That’s it? You’re going to fire me and uproot nine innocent people just because they’re making you look bad?”

Riddle starts to speak, but you steamroll right over whatever he was going to say. “No! No! This is a mental hospital! The dementia ward’s patients run down the halls naked, the schizophrenics shout obscenities in the middle of the night, and don’t even get me _started_ on the eating disorder patients, and _we’re_ the ward that makes you look bad?”

Jack sighs and leans back, casting a meaningful glance at Chairman Rassilon that says _We’re going to be here for a while, aren’t we?_

You aren’t done. You lunge across the table towards Morgan. She jumps, but you snatch her file out from under her folded hands. You flick it open so fast you almost rip the cover off and jam your finger at a name. “See here? Azula Pyron. Transfer from the juvenile ward when she turned eighteen. Been with us for three years. She was placed in mental care after her father burned her house down when she was eleven, killing himself, her mother, and her brother. She is incapable of taking care of herself and stays in a regressed state, and continues to believe she’s eleven years old. Not to mention she’s pathologically terrified of fire!”

Snow sighs, but you aren’t finished yet. “But guess what? When Azula first came to us, she had the mental state of a four-year-old. She couldn’t dress herself or articulate more than a toddler could. Because that’s how she remembers her brother Zuko, who died at age five.” You slam the folder shut and shove it back at Morgan. “Today, Azula is talking, feeding herself, functioning, talking about her family and her feelings. No, she isn’t better, but she’s _getting_ better! She’s healing! They all are!”

“What about…” Ruby glances down at her own folder. “Castiel Novak?”

You feel your heart sink. Castiel has been one of your more challenging cases. “What about him?”

“He’s been with you… almost ten years.” Ruby shuts the folder and gives you an unmistakably cruel smile. “Tell us about him.”

“Castiel was already on medication for depression and anxiety before he came to us,” you snap defensively. “He had a pre-existing mental condition even before his wife’s death. It’s a miracle he’s recovered as much as he already has.”

“Oh, please don’t say the word _miracle_ in front of him,” Rassilon says in a rather malicious tone. “You’ll never hear the end of it.”

Jack raises an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think I’m familiar with this case.”

You sigh. None of the board members really understand delusional patients. Not the way you do. “Castiel Novak has what is known as a grandiose religious delusion, triggered by not taking his medication while his wife’s decline consumed all his time and the resulting emotional upheaval…”

“Wacko thinks he’s an angel sent to do God’s bidding,” Ruby interrupts casually. “His wife kicked it and the guy went into a tailspin, ended up in some hospital’s ICU trying to heal everybody and help them get to Heaven. Nut.”

You try not to grind your teeth. Instead, you snatch Morgan’s file again. This time she moves her hands and lets you take it, probably afraid of getting paper cuts on those finely manicured fingers. “Take a look at this. Karkat Vantas, checked straight into Hogwarts by a social worker on his eighteenth birthday, been with us for less than a year.”

“What about him?” Bella flips lazily through her own folder, looking for Vantas’s file.

“He takes all his medications, participates in group discussions, and his psychological test scores are steadily getting bett—”

“‘Violent, unpredictable, upsets the other patients,’” Rassilon reads. He looks at you over his glasses. “Were these _your_ comments?”

You seethe, but try not to let it show. “Karkat shouts a lot. It’s really his only form of communication. But he isn’t violent. He’s never hurt or even _tried_ to hurt any of the patients or faculty. And _no,_ those were _not_ my comments, those came from Doctor Hawthorne, when he came to do the inspection last month. You should know about that.”

“Yes, we’ll be contacting Gale quite soon,” Riddle comments coolly. He hasn’t even touched his folder. “And what is Mr. Vantas’s delusion?”

They’re touching on all the wrong subjects. Why can’t they ask about the progress you’ve made? Like how Amelia doesn’t beg Nurse Williams to marry her with tears in her eyes anymore, or the way Azula doesn’t shake and scream when it’s cold outside and her breath fogs up the window like smoke, or how Katy Everdeen is actually talking to you and telling you about her little sister now, or how Tony Stark is starting to ask where his father is, when before he refused to acknowledge he even had one.

“Karkat has a rare somatic bizarre-delusional disorder, the seeds of which were probably genetically sown from his abusive father and furthered by said abuse…”

“Oh wow, you haven’t heard about Karkat yet?” Bella laughs. She _laughs._ You are so close to strangling someone. _So close._ “The kid is convinced he’s an alien. Like, an actual alien. His homeworld was destroyed so now his species has to hide on Earth until they can integrate. Apparently his even crazier cult-leader dad beat up Karkat’s brother so bad, they split them up and put them both in foster care.” She chuckles again. “And as we all know, foster kids usually end up here.”

You are so close to storming out, but you know that won’t help you. You have to plead your case. You can’t let them dissolve the ward. “These files show _progress,”_ you growl. “Isn’t that your big complaint? There’s no progress in my ward?”

Morgan sighs and picks up her phone to check the time.

“That’s about the gist of it, yes,” Rassilon responds coolly.

“I’ll show you progress.” _Wait, what?_ “Give me a month—” _no stop it_ “—and you’ll have progress—” _mouth what are you doing stop talking_ “—you’ll have your progress!” _What is wrong with you what are you even saying oh god_ “Those patients will be walking out of here!” _STOP TALKING STOP TALKING STOP TALKING ABORT MISSION DISASTER AHEAD WHAT ARE YOU DOING DO YOU EVEN THINK WHEN WORDS COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH_

Silence falls on the table. Ruby smirks and examines her fingernails. Jack snorts a laugh and scoots back his chair, standing up to leave.

Riddle catches his arm and sits him back down, staring at you with snakelike eyes. “You’re trying to guarantee success? In mentally dysfunctional patients?”

You swear one of these days you’re going to start thinking about what you say before you say it. You try to swallow with a suddenly dry mouth. “Well, yes. They’ve all improved. Greatly, in fact. Many of them were probably going to be discharged within the year.” Okay now you’re just making things up. “Well, barring any incidents, of course.” _Incidents? Stop talking!_

Bella very loudly stifles a giggle, but Riddle silences her with a look. Chairman Rassilon looks thoughtful.

“If you can show progress in your patients within a month, we would reconsider your termination,” he finally says.

Elation fills your heart and you’re about half a second away from cheering and cartwheeling out of the room and probably falling down a flight of stairs and you won’t even care about the broken bones because your children are safe.

Before you can do that, Rassilon continues. “But. This has to be significant progress. There can be no violent incidents during this month. No one tries to run away. No one steals drugs. No one breaks windows or throws furniture. No one does anything… crazy, and you can keep your little ward open.”

No one does anything crazy. _Well, that might be asking a bit much, Chairman?_ But you hold back your snarky comments and simply nod. “You’ll be impressed,” you promise, and _why do you keep doing that._

“We’ll send Doctor Hawthorne to evaluate your patients in” —Rassilon checks his calendar— “thirty days. If his evaluations show a marked improvement upon these,” he taps the closed folder in front of him, “then you get to keep your job and your nuthouse ward. Understood?”

You nod. “Understood. Am I allowed to leave now?”

Ruby sighs audibly, echoing his question.

Jack rolls his eyes. “Yeah, just go. You’re not that hard a guy to find, Doctor. If we need anything else we’ll let you know.”

The board members stare you down. Nobody’s packing up to leave, which means they’re going to keep talking about you after you leave. It bothers you to not be able to defend yourself from their slander, but there isn’t anything you can do about it. You silently get up and leave, shutting the door behind you.

As you wait for the elevator to take you down to the lobby floor, you ponder.

On the one hand, you’re angry that they want to close your ward.

On the other hand, you’re elated that they’re giving you a chance.

And on the last hand, you’re anxious about the deal. How are you supposed to cure nine delusional patients in a month?

The elevator arrives as you conclude what you’ve already known.

You have a lot of work to do.

Instead of the lobby button, you press 4.

_Might as well get started._


	3. Break It To Me Gently, Doc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this is such a fandom clusterfuck  
> (i'm not sorry)

You open the ward door and are greeted by a string of profanity.

“…SWEAR IF YOU EVER TRY TO BITE ME AGAIN I WILL FLY SO FAR OFF THE HANDLE THEY’RE GOING TO SEND A SEARCH PARTY AFTER ME.”

“Karkat,” you say, more out of reflex than anything else. “We’ve talked about this. Use your inside voice.”

“YOU CAN TAKE THAT INSIDE VOICE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR—”

Amy interrupts by squealing and throwing herself at you. “You came back! You said you were leaving, but you came back!”

You let her hug you. “Yes, yes I did. Amy, I need to talk to the nurses for a minute, and then we’re going to get the whole group together. Can you round up everybody for me?”

Amy blinks in confusion. “But… we already had group today.”

“Yes, but today is special. Can you help me out?”

Amy acquiesces and starts rounding everyone up. You sigh and head over to the nurses’ station. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation.

There are only four nurses in your ward. Rory Williams and Minerva McGonagall work the day shift, and Jade Harley and Donna Noble keep an eye on things overnight. It’s nearly seven o’clock, so all four of them are here for the shift change.

Jade notices you first. “Hi, Doctor!” she says sweetly. “Didn’t you have a conference to go to?”

“Well, yes, I did. I’m back.” You really aren’t sure how to start the conversation.

“So?” she prompts. “How did it go?”

By now Rory and Minerva have stopped talking and are looking at you as well. Donna is pretending to file paperwork, but you can tell she’s listening.

You sigh and run a hand through your perpetually untidy hair. “They… they want to shut down the ward.”

Donna drops the file.

Minerva gasps and covers her mouth.

Rory stares at you in shock.

Jade sputters. “But… What? They can’t do that!”

“They can,” you insist. “And they want to. They were going to fire me today.”

“But they haven’t yet?” Minerva’s clear voice rings out.

“I… bought us some time.” You don’t know why you’re dancing around the issue.

“How?” This time it’s Rory who asks.

“Well… I sort of made up excuses as I went along. And I might have made some promises that weren’t too bright.”

Donna finishes picking up the dropped file and looks at you sharply. No one can make you feel more like a scolded child than Donna. “What did you do?”

“I promised we’d have patients walking out of here in a month.”

Rory buries his face in his hands.

“You WHAT?” Donna shouts.

“How are we supposed to do that?” Jade protests, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

You’re getting exasperated. “Well, if I hadn’t told them we could, then they would have shut down the ward and we’d all be out of our jobs. At least now we have time to think of something!”

They fall silent.

You run a hand through your hair and sigh. “Look, I have to… talk to them. Try to explain things. Just act like everything’s normal, okay? I don’t want any of them getting scared.”

Jade sniffles a little and hurries off in the direction of the bathroom. Donna squares her shoulders and goes on filing paperwork. Minerva gives you a long, piercing stare from behind her glasses, but tucks a gray strand of hair behind her ear and leaves the ward.

Rory is still standing there. “Doctor, we can’t cure people. Not all the time. Most of these cases are pretty much hopeless.”

“No case is hopeless,” you snap. “And we have to try. _I_ have to try!”

Rory is about to say something else, but Amy loudly drags several chairs over to the TV. He shakes his head and goes back in the nurses’ station, locking the door behind him out of habit.

  


You have all nine patients sitting in a circle and now you’re wondering where you’re supposed to begin.

The big clock on the wall ticks away the time.

It is _so_ past time for you to go home.

You take a deep breath and still have no idea what to say.

Marlin is staring at you blankly. So is Katy. So are Tony and Amy and Sam.

The clock ticks away another minute.

Castiel breaks the silence. “I don't understand. Why are we in group?”

You don’t have a good answer and it probably shows on your face.

“You look like someone ran over a box of puppies,” Karkat observes dryly.

Azula gasps. “Puppies?”

Harry pipes up. “My godfather can turn into a dog.”

“No he can’t!” Amy yells.

You can feel control slipping from your fingers and try to regain it. “The reason we’re all here,” you say loudly, and they settle down. “It’s… well. I had a meeting with corporate today. Remember them?” Scattered nods. “They’re my bosses. They’re in charge of the whole hospital.” More nods. “Well… they pointed out some problems we have in our ward.”

Tony raises his hand. “Okay, hello everyone, yeah, that’s stupid. We don’t have problems. It’s been at least a month since we broke that window, I mean, what more do they expect?”

“For the record, that was not my fault,” Sam mumbles. “I was pushed.”

“It wasn’t about the window,” you sigh. “They’re concerned that no one’s leaving.”

“Why would we leave?” Amy says brightly. “We like it here!”

“Yes, Amelia, but that’s the problem. This is a hospital, not a hotel. The whole reason you’re here is so that eventually you can go home. We’re supposed to help you and make you better. But we haven’t.” You take a deep breath, preparing for the onslaught. “So they said they’re going to shut down the ward.”

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

Karkat draws breath to start yelling, but Amy claps a hand over his mouth and fixes you with a reproachful look.

Sam speaks up. “But… what’ll happen to us?”

“They can’t kick us out, right?”

“I don’t want to leave!”

“What if we all, like, locked the doors so they couldn’t get us?”

“That’s a dumb idea.”

“Yeah, well, you have dumb ideas all the time and I never say anything!”

“This is STUPID. Who do they think they are?!”

“The Ministry is interfering at Hogwarts!”

Suddenly, a sharp, clear voice cuts through the rest. “There’s only one solution.”

Everyone turns to Katy Everdeen, including you. Katy’s never spoken in group before.

She stares out the window, eyeing the basketball court like it’s a battlefield. “Rebellion.”

“Okay! Um! Thank you for contributing, Katy, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” you say hurriedly. “I had a long talk with the board, and we’re… They’re going to give us a month to straighten up. If things aren’t better by then, we’re going to have to close down.”

“Better how?” Harry’s voice is very quiet.

“Better like… People are going home, getting better. Everyone behaves themselves and takes their meds on time and no one gets in fights.”

“And no broken windows.” Tony nudges Sam, who turns crimson.

“I SAID it wasn’t my FAULT, Stark.”

“Oh, please. Did a demon break it?”

“Anthony,” you say sharply, and he falls silent.

Everyone else falls silent too.

Karkat chews on his thumbnail and stares at the floor. “So you’re asking us to stop being crazy,” he summarizes. “That’s… that’s incredibly stupid.”

“I know,” you say, and then group is over and you are 200% ready to go home.


	4. Business As (un)Usual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which there is a cat named loki and he is a shit

     River Song has her boots up on the reception desk when you exit the elevator.

     “Hello, sweetie,” she says in that… that way she has. “You’re up late.”

     You don’t have enough energy to play her games. “Yeah, we had a corporate emergency today. I don’t feel like talking about it.”

     River’s eyes soften and she shakes back her impossibly thick hair. “Yes, I heard. Treixes and Riddle were talking about it earlier. Did you actually promise to have patients going home within a month?”

     You shrug helplessly. “I… yeah.”

     “Oh, you clever boy.” She winks at you. “Danger, scheming, and revolting against authority. You’re a love triangle away from being a teen romance novel.”

     “Don’t make fun of me, I’ve seen what you read behind the desk on slow days.”

     River smirks and nudges a trashy-looking book under her computer monitor. “I’m a receptionist, darling. I’m lonely and bored all day.” She winks at you again. “But at least I have you for company, right, Doctor?”

     It’s suddenly very warm in the lobby.

     “OhlookatthetimeIhavetogonowbigdaytomorrowI’vegotallkindsofplans” comes spilling out of your mouth as you hurry for the door. It’s a revolving door. You hate this door. You struggle with it a moment.

     “Push on it,” River calls, a giggle in her voice. “If you… know what I mean.”

     You _don’t_ know what she means, but you shove on it and half-fall through the door and storm out to your car with River’s laughter echoing behind you.

~

     It’s a good night for you. Meaning, of course, that none of the night-shift nurses call you with an emergency and you get to bed by midnight. Or you would, if you could slow down your thinking for a minute.

     How are you going to do this?

     You should never have promised them results like that.

     You should have just accepted the fact that your ward was shutting down.

     What’s the point of this? Putting off the inevitable a little while longer? Getting up everyone’s hopes, only to have them dashed to pieces?

     Why do you never think these things through?

     Your cat Loki jumps up into your lap. As much as the little brat enjoys causing trouble and mayhem all over the house, he’s sensitive enough to know when you need a hug.

     You scratch between Loki’s ears. “I’m going to feel sorry for myself all night,” you announce.

     Loki bites your finger and meows.

     “Fine,” you say, and he jumps off your lap. “I just don’t know where to start.” But no sooner do the words leave your mouth than you notice your briefcase. (You aren’t really sure why you have a briefcase. Most days you just carry it around with a folder full of origami paper inside to make it sound less empty and to pass the time in your office.) You remember that you brought the folders back with you from the corporate meeting.

     Without thinking it through too much, you grab the folders and leaf through them.

     Anthony Stark.

     Marlin Camlot.

     Katy Everdeen.

     Amy Pond.

     Castiel Novak.

     Harry Potter.

     Samuel Winchester.

     Karkat Vantas.

     Azula Pyron.

     You look at all the names and photos and the clinical jargon describing how sick they were – but try as you might, you can’t make yourself see this the board’s way. These are people. These are your friends, your children, and sure maybe you care too much but how can you do anything less?

     Loki yowls for attention and you notice he’s peed in the kitchen. He doesn’t look the least bit sorry.

     “One thing at a time,” you mumble out loud, and realize that’s where you should start.

~

     You walk in the lobby precisely at eight AM the next morning and almost spill your coffee all over yourself.

     “Hello, sweetie,” River says.

     “Hello, Doctor,” says Katy Everdeen sitting beside her.

     You sputter unattractively. “Aren’t you… I don’t know, supposed to be in the ward?!”

     “I opened the door,” Katy says indifferently. “Watched you type the code last night.”

     River smiles. “I’ve greatly enjoyed your company, Katy, but I think it’s time you went back upstairs with the Doctor now, all right?”

     Katy shrugs. “Mmkay.” She heads for the elevator without waiting for you.

     When you’re fairly sure she’s out of earshot, you turn on River. “Why is she out of the ward?! Why didn’t you call security or, or at least call up to Jade or Donna and let them know where she was?!”

     River’s eyes narrow. “Don’t get snippy. If I called security, they’d report it to the board, and this is exactly the sort of thing that falls in the category of ‘Misbehaving.’ I thought it’d be nice to avoid failing your little Save-Ward-Four Mission the day after it began.”

     You haven’t finished your coffee yet and the lack of caffeine is probably making you crabby. You sigh and ruffle your hair. You forgot to comb it this morning. As usual. “You’re right. You’re right, River, sorry.”

     Seemingly mollified, River tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Anytime, sweetie. I’ll intercept her again if she tries it. Change the door code, and use the card-swipe lock too.”

     You escort Katy back to the ward and sneak her back in. No one notices; not even Jade, whose eyes show dark circles behind her glasses when she approaches you outside your office door.

     “We’re changing Marlin’s meds,” she announces. “It’s something fresh out of FDA trials. It should keep his hallucinations in check but cuts out all the side effects he’s been having.”

     “Oh,” you say. You hadn’t really noticed he was having any side effects. “What’s it called?”

     “It doesn’t have a name yet,” Jade admits. “I just need you to sign off on the change and we can have it by tonight.” She hands you the clipboard.

     You glance over the forms. You hate dealing with the paperwork, but most of your patients don’t have any legal guardians to handle things like this, so it lands on your desk. You sign the appropriate blanks and hand the clipboard back to Jade. “You look like you had a fun night,” you state.

     She gives you the same tired, bucktoothed smile you see every morning. “It was mostly quiet. Karkat had nightmares again. We might have to take out his antidepressants if they don’t stop.”

     You try not to wince in pity. “You were up with him all night?”

     She shrugs. “I let him watch movies with Donna and I out in the common room until four-ish. He behaved. And he eventually went back to bed anyway.”

     Jade’s too nice to be a nurse, but as usual you aren’t in any state to chide her for it. Instead, you thank her for telling you about Marlin’s med change and go to drop your briefcase in your office.

     Out in the common room, most of the patients are eating breakfast. In the rest of the hospital, most everyone eats in the cafeteria, but Ward 4 is notorious for being unmanageable at meals, so food gets sent up instead. You can’t hear them through the one-way mirror that separates your office from the common room, but you can see Harry staring intently at his cup of water and mumbling something at it. Azula is sitting beside him, watching him with a very concentrated expression. Castiel and Sam are talking intently over their food. Tony is trying to balance a plastic spoon on his nose while Amelia laughs and Katy looks annoyed. Marlin is watching Katy and hasn’t touched his food. Karkat isn’t there – you assume Jade is letting him sleep.

     You open up your patient files and start flicking through the pages aimlessly. There has to be some way you can help these people. There’s always a way to help them. You’re a Doctor, and that’s one of the first things they teach you in Doctor school. Or maybe not, it’s been a while since you were in school.

     As your mind wanders, your eyes settle on a name. You frown and reread the sentence it’s attached to.

     You reread it again.

     Well.

     “Donna,” you say into the nurse intercom. “Can you send Tony in here after he’s finished eating?”

     Donna says something sassy in response, but you’ve already picked up the phone book and started leafing through it. You dial a number, and as it rings you tap at your desk impatiently.

     “Hello?” someone says on the other end.

     “Yes,” you say a little too loudly and cringe but keep going. “May I speak to miss Pepper Potts?”

     “Speaking,” she says, and your heart begins to lift.


	5. There Was Probably A Movie Like This Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which i will probably be torn to pieces by Original Marvel fans bc i only saw the movies

Pepper Potts is a pretty, blonde, nervous wreck in your office. When you’d talked to her on the phone yesterday she’d quickly agreed to come see you, but now it looked like she was regretting coming. You’d made some small talk earlier, and found out that Pepper is twenty-two, graduating college this year with a business degree and working a paid internship with a large corporation. Then you’d fallen into an awkward silence while you waited for Rory to send Tony in.

“How is he?” Pepper suddenly asks. “From a… medical standpoint.”

You reach for your desk before realizing you don’t have any papers to shuffle. Shame. That’s your go-to for pretending to look busy. “He’s… well, he’s certainly not our most difficult case. He’s easygoing, he takes his medication, and he usually doesn’t cause too much trouble. He gets along well with most of the nurses, and while the other patients can find his personality a little… much… there are rarely any problems between them.”

Pepper purses her lips. She’ll make a great businesswoman. _“Medically,_ though.”

 _Medically,_ you don’t think anything is actually wrong with Tony, but you aren’t allowed to disclose that information.

Fortunately, there’s a tap at the door just then, and Rory lets Tony through.

Tony wanders into the room and takes his usual seat at your desk, oblivious to Pepper sitting in the corner. “First things first,” he says in that bored, languid way, “I didn’t know it was going to make Azula cry. Secondly, anyone could have put that lighter under her pillow, just because Amy says it was me doesn’t mean it was me. And thirdly—”

“Tony,” you say, and make a mental note to tell him off for the Azula incident later, “we have a guest today. Do you recognize her?”

Tony blinks at you and finally notices Pepper sitting behind him. She half-smiles at him and gives a little wave, apparently unsure how to proceed.

“Pepper?” Tony sounds more than a little surprised.

“Hey, Tony.”

From what you gathered in Tony’s file, Pepper had been his best friend and the first to notice he was veering off the road of sanity. In fact, she’d been the one to drop him off here at Hogwarts on his check-in day. But there had been nothing in the records to indicate that she had ever come to see him during visiting hours.

Essentially, as far as you knew, this was the first time they’d seen each other in two years.

“You two talk for a while,” you say, standing up. Pepper looks at you in a panicky way, like _you’re not going to leave me alone with him, are you?_ But you have an idea. And you need to be not-here for it to work.

You slip out the door and let it close behind you, careful to keep the lock from clicking into place. In the common room, Minerva is herding the other patients into a circle around the TV. It’s movie day, apparently, and Rory is fiddling around with the VCR player. You drag a chair over and settle down to wait.

Eventually you all agree on _Titanic._ No one really watches it except Katy, who stares at the screen with an intensity you’ve never seen, and everyone else seems to prefer talking over the actors.

“Jack is pretty.”

“No he’s not, he has dumb hair.”

“Rose has nice hair.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause it looks like your hair.”

“So?”

“This is STUPID, they’ve known each other for… like THREE DAYS. You can’t make a meaningful emotional connection in THREE DAYS.”

“Karkat, calm down.”

“No! She’s… see what she’s DOING is she’s romanticizing Jack as the guy who was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, when really she only even knew him for SUCH a short time that he didn’t have TIME to annoy her! AND THEN HE DIED AND SO THAT’S HOW SHE REMEMBERS HIM THEY WEREN’T EVEN IN LOVE AT ALL.”

“Karkat it is a movie, please shut up.”

“IT’S ROMEO AND JULIET ALL OVER AGAIN.”

“What I don’t understand is, okay, why throw the diamond in the ocean at the end? I get it’s s’posed to be symbolic or… whatever, but couldn’t she sell it and like, pay for her grandkids college or something?”

“Sam it’s a movie.”

“Yeah, but…”

They ramble like that for most of the movie. Most of it is spent with Amy pointing out things she likes (usually it’s still Rose’s hair), Karkat spewing rants about the romance, and Azula shrieking with laughter at nothing in particular. You, however, spend it glancing periodically at your office door. After two hours pass, you start to worry, but you stay in your seat, pretending to watch the movie.

“There’s enough room on that floaty thing for both of them,” Marlin suddenly points out.

“I KNOW,” Karkat yells in frustration. “JUST DUMP THE STUPID HUMAN GIRL IN THE WATER, SHE’S FAT, SHE’LL SURVIVE.”

Minerva taps Karkat on the head. “You’re getting sent to bed early if you keep shouting, Mr. Vantas.”

“Scientifically,” Castiel cuts in, “the door wouldn’t support both of their weight, especially in water so cold. There’s enough space for both of them, but then the door would sink.”

“Scientifically, your face looks like a butt, and shut up.” Amy sticks her tongue out and you _know_ you should chastise her for it but you’re too busy trying not to giggle.

“Amy,” Rory starts, then stops because you can tell he’s having the same struggle.

Azula bursts out laughing again.

You take the opportunity to slip off to your office. You tap gently at the door and open it when no one answers in two seconds. Worried, nope, nobody’s worried, who’s worried because it certainly isn’t you and oh god what if they’ve DIED or something

Tony looks up at you in surprise as you (gracefully) enter the room.

“…married in September, oh hello Doctor?” Pepper blinks at you.

You try to slip back into Let’s-Be-A-Professional mode. “Hello, how are things going in here?”

“Oh…kay?” Tony says it like a question.

“Tony was telling me about some of his friends out there.” Pepper nods at the two-way mirror. You look out into the common room and watch Harry try to toss a piece of popcorn in his mouth. (Technically they aren’t supposed to have popcorn, but Rory likes breaking rules sometimes too.)

“Ahh. Yes, we certainly have some interesting companions here, don’t we, Tony?”

“Yeah.” Tony fiddles with the drawstring in his Hogwarts-issued pants.

“Anyway,” Pepper continues, “then he asked me about what I’ve been up to.”

“Ahh,” you say again. It seems to be part of your Let’s-Be-A-Professional routine. “I think I heard someone was getting married in September?”  


“Um, well, yes. Me.” She turns pink and holds up her hand, where a diamond catches the fluorescent light. “Just a few months away.”  


“Oh, lovely,” you say because you don’t really have anything else to say. After a silence just barely too long to be comfortable, you add, “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Um, a guy I worked with. His name’s Phil. Coulson.”

You smile and have officially run out of things to say.

Tony just keeps looking at the floor.

Wow, when did that clock on your desk get so loud?

“Anyway,” Pepper says somewhat abruptly, making both you and Tony jump, “I should probably get going. It was great to see you, Tony.” She stands up and leans down to hug him. “You should try to come to the wedding, okay? It’d be great if you could be there.”

Tony mumbles something noncommittal in reply and Pepper Potts leaves your office. You realize, belatedly, that you’re still standing, so you go behind your desk and sit down. Outside in the common room, Azula is dissolving into giggles. You aren’t sure why, it’s just credits rolling on the TV now.

You shuffle some papers around and pick one up, pretending to be absorbed in it. It’s just a copy of Marlin’s change-of-medicine form that Donna probably left on your desk this morning. You pull open Marlin’s file drawer from the enormous cabinet to the side of your desk and shove the paper in place.

While your back is turned, Tony speaks.

“She grew up.”

You hesitate in front of the still-open file drawer. “Pepper?” you ask, though you really don’t need to.

“Yeah…. We were kids together. We ran around, and played, and dove into pools and stuff. Our families took _vacations_ together. She’s like, younger than me by six months and look where she is. Graduating school, getting some nice job all on her own without her rich dad even pulling name to help her get it, getting… married. To Coulson of all people. She’s a grownup.”

You slowly shut the drawer, but you don’t turn to look at Tony yet.

Still more softly, he says, “And then look at me.”

“What about you, Tony?” you say soothingly. You hope it sounds soothing. In truth your heart is pounding and you’re just a little too excited. This is what you hoped would happen. And it’s happening.

“Well, look at me! I’m, I’m nineteen and a high school dropout and locked in a nuthouse and, and I’m wearing pajamas for crying out loud!”

“This isn’t a nuthouse, Tony. And those are not pajamas, okay, those are just your pants. You have actual pajamas in your room.”

“I know, these _are_ those pajamas. I didn’t want to get dressed this morning.”

Well.

“Tony, you’re doing as much as you can,” you say (hopefully still soothingly). “You take your meds on time, you don’t cause trouble, you get enough sleep and you’re good about talking in group and therapy. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.” You pause and finally turn to look him in the eye before delivering the final blow. “You can’t help that you’re sick.”

Tony drops his gaze. A crimson flush creeps up his neck, and you want to throw all your papers in the air and howl in victory because Tony is about two minutes away from making your life one-ninth easier.

“Doctor,” he says slowly, two minutes later, “I… I don’t think… I don’t think I’m a cyborg anymore.”

  
~

It’s five days later and Tony is cleared for discharge. Amy hugs him tight and squeals until you think your ears are going to start bleeding. “Tony’s going home!” she shrieks happily, over and over, and then Azula joins in and you almost start laughing. Everyone in the ward is happy, and for the first time in a long time, you feel like you deserve your title. You’ve made someone better, and he gets to go home now. Because of you.

(Because you manipulated his childhood friend into showing him that the world was going to leave him behind if he didn’t grow up and put on his big-boy-pants but hey, if it works, it works.)

You walk Tony down to the lobby. He’s wearing the clothes he’d had on his check-in day. They’re a little too small, and even though you know that’s to be expected because he’s still a teenager, you see a vague, sentimental symbolism in it.

Pepper is waiting there at the reception desk, chatting with River. They turn and see you come out of the elevator and both of their faces light up. Pepper rushes forward and throws her arms around Tony, and you think you might see some tears in her eyes but then she blinks. “Thank you so much, Doctor,” she says quietly. “This… I’m just… really happy to have my friend back.”

You smile and try to think of something to say that isn’t “Well yes but he wasn’t actually sick and you COULD have visited him any time so shame on you miss Potts” but you come up blank and just keep smiling as Pepper takes Tony’s hand and leads him to the doors.

Tony’s voice drifts back to you.

“Did my dad ever talk about me?”

Pepper looks back at you under the pretense of brushing hair out of her face.

You shake your head. Anthony Stark Sr. had never once contacted Hogwarts after Tony’s admittance.

Pepper turns away again and takes Tony’s hand. “No, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” says Tony, and then the doors close behind them.


	6. Metronomes Are Not A Board Certified Medical Device

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which I wish i made this chapter about Dean Winchester bc lets face it he needs more help than Sam

You collapse into a chair. One patient down, eight more to go. You flick idly through the stack of paperwork Donna’s left on your desk. The stapled packet on the top is a notice from the pharmacy downstairs, approving Marlin’s change of medication. You shove it into his folder and sigh, resigning yourself to a few hours of handling paperwork.

Or maybe you’ll just convince Jade to do it for you tonight.

Minerva’s voice buzzes through the intercom. “Doctor, Dean Winchester is here.”

Dean is Sam’s brother and the only one of your patients’ family members to regularly visit. He’s here every week. “Send him on in.” You abandon your pile of paperwork and head out into the common area.

~

Sam can’t be bothered with Dean today. He sits and talks to Castiel instead. Dean doesn’t mind – he rarely does.

“So how is he?” Dean asks you.

You give a halfhearted shrug. “He’s… no different from last week, really. He takes all his meds on time. He talks in therapy. We just don’t know what else to do.”

Dean nods thoughtfully. “What does he talk about?”

“What he sees. What he thinks about people. He doesn’t usually narrate his delusions like some of the other patients, so we have to ask him about it. He’s good at hiding it.”

“Must be inherited,” Dean comments, and you detect a note of bitterness. You consider Dean’s tense relationship with the rest of his family and think, like you often do, how Dean could probably benefit more from therapy than his little brother does.

“Dean, we got some bad news last week,” you say, finally deciding to broach the topic. He stiffens.

“The corporates decided that this wing isn’t… useful. We have long-term patients and most don’t go home.”

“That’s bull,” Dean snaps. “I passed Tony on my way in here. He went home, right?”

“Well… yes,” you say. “But Tony’s the first to leave in a long time. The rest have been here for months, you know? So the board told me last week they’re planning to shut us down.”

“What?!”

“That was the general reaction, yes.”

“But…” Dean fumbles for words. “No. That can’t happen. What are they going to do with the crazies in here?”

You sigh. “They’re going to move them out to other facilities, probably out of state.”

“Out of state?!” Dean’s almost shouting now. Rory leans out of the nurses’ station to look your way.

“Dean, calm down. I bought the ward some time. That decision isn’t final.”

“What, did you sell your soul or something?”

“I promised them we’d get it together and start sending patients home,” you say calmly. “They gave me a month to prove it.”

Dean scratches the back of his head. “Okay. So you fixed Tony and everything’s okay now, right?”

“I need more than one patient to leave before they’ll consider leaving us open.” You take a deep breath. “I want to work with Sam next.”

“Fine, just sign him over to me. I’ll take him home today, problem solved.”

“You know it isn’t that simple, Dean. I need to make sure he’s stable before I can switch him to outpatient care.”

Dean sighs and looks over at Sam, who has stopped talking to Castiel and is staring at the floor. “So what do you want to do?”

“Sam’s been more receptive than usual in therapy. If I can pinpoint the reason for his delusions, we can work from there, but he can’t tell me that. That’s where you come in.”

That gets Dean’s attention. “Okay, what do you need from me?”

You nod at your office. “Talking.”

~

“He was six months old and the fire started in his nursery. What else do you need?”

“Dean, I need more detail than that.” Your pen is poised to take notes, but you’re starting to doubt you’re going to get anything useful out of this conversation.

“Well I was five, so forgive me if things are a little fuzzy.” Dean frowns and stares down at his hands. “He was sleeping. Mom heard something on the baby monitor and went to go check on him. She didn’t come back.”

“And your father?”

“He woke up when the smoke alarms went off. I did too. The neighbors had already called 911 by then.”

“What happened next?”

“Dad found the nursery on fire. Mom wasn’t breathing, so he gave Sam to me and told me to take him outside. He tried to get her out too, but the firefighters showed up and dragged him out. The whole house was on fire by the time they showed up.” Dean shrugs like the story isn’t that big of a deal.

“Did Sam ever talk about the fire?” you ask next.

Dean gives you an exasperated look. “Doc, he was a baby. He was literally six months old. He doesn’t remember.”

A suspicion has been growing in your mind that says the opposite. “Sam watched his mother die. An infant has no way to process that sort of trauma.”

“So… you’re saying he _does_ remember?”

“Well, some people can remember their own birth. Memory is a funny thing, Dean. It’s possible that he has those repressed memories and is unable to access them, so they come out as…” You fumble for an appropriate term.

“Insanity,” Dean finishes for you. You shrug. “So he _kind of_ remembers the fire, but not clearly enough to _actually_ remember it, so his brain got all twisted up?”

“Something like that. It would explain his fixation with demons and hellfire.”

Dean processes that. “Okay. So how would you fix expressed memories or whatever?”

“Repressed memories,” you correct, and then say nothing because you honestly have no idea. Most therapists dismiss the notion of memory suppression at all. “I’ll talk with Sam about it.”

Dean looks like he’s about to say something else, but just then Minerva’s voice comes over the intercom again. “Doctor, it’s 5:30 in the evening and visiting hours are over. I’m afraid Mr. Winchester will need to leave.” Click.

The only thing Dean says before he exits your office is, “Thanks, Doc. I want my brother back.”

~

The next morning, Donna gives you a skeptical look when she sees you setting up the metronome on your desk. “And just what do you think you’re gonna do with that?” she asks.

“Something that is typically looked upon as a pseudoscience in any respected medical circle,” you admit, tinkering with the archaic device.

Jade enters your office with a stack of paper that reaches her chin. “Finished most of it,” she announces breathlessly. “They’re sorted by which file they go into, but I couldn’t find any… What are you doing?”

“Something typically looked upon as a pseudoscience in any—”

“He’s gonna try to hypnotize Sam,” Donna interrupts.

You glare at her.

“You’re gonna what?” Jade blinks. “Doctor, you know hypnosis isn’t like it is in the movies, right?”

Sometimes you forget the nurses went to medical school too.

“It can’t hurt to try,” you say, which is the mantra you’ve been repeating in your head since you conceived the idea yesterday. “It’s not like it can make things worse.”

Jade purses her lips and drops the stack of paperwork on your desk. “Do you even know how hypnotism works?” she asks.

“I took a class.” You watched a YouTube tutorial last night.

She sighs. “Well, let me know how it goes. I’m going home.” She leaves.

Donna gives you a hard look. “You’d better know what you’re doing,” she says quietly. “Don’t distress him. If it isn’t working, don’t keep going. Sam isn’t a lab rat.”

She sweeps out the door.

You call Sam in.

~

“What’s that?” is the first thing he says as he sits down.

“It’s called a metronome,” you answer. “It helps musicians keep a rhythm.”

“Are we playing music?”

“No, we’re going to do something a little different.” You double-check to make sure you drew the curtains over the window. “It might seem a bit strange, but I want you to trust me, okay?”

Sam eyes you. He’s not good with trust. But he doesn’t say no.

“Sit back and close your eyes.”

He hesitates before complying.

You start the metronome. The steady _click, click, click, click_ isn’t as loud as you thought it would be, and you can almost ignore it. “Now, I want you to focus on your breathing…”

Five minutes later, Sam seems completely under.

“Can you tell me your name?” you ask once you think it’s worked.

“Samuel Winchester,” he responds in a quiet monotone.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

He’d never been able to answer that before. You make a note of it on your clipboard.

“Do you ever see monsters, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of monsters do you see?”

“Demons. Ghosts. Hellhounds. Dead things.”

“Does anyone else see the monsters?”

“I don’t know.”

You feel like you should write that down, but you have more questions. “Do you have any family, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Dean and John.”

“That’s your brother and father, right?”

“Yes.”

The metronome is still clicking quietly.

“Do you have a mother?”

“No.”

“You used to, didn’t you?” You’re running blind here. You hadn’t clearly planned how to lead Sam to his memories of the fire, but you figure this is a good start.

“Yes. Mary.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died.”

“How did she die, Sam?”

“Yellow-Eyes killed her.”

What?

This is new.

“Who’s Yellow-Eyes?” You scrawl the name in your notes.

“He’s a demon.”

“How do you know he killed Mary?”

Sam doesn’t answer.

“Did you see him kill her?”

“I… think so.” Sam’s eyelids flutter.

“Let’s talk about Dean,” you say quickly, not eager to agitate him. You don’t know if he can pull himself out of hypnosis, but you don’t want to start experimenting. “What do you remember about him?”

“He’s older than me.” Sam’s breathing settles back into a regular rhythm.

“Does he see the monsters too?”

“No. But he believed me.”

Interesting. You make a note of it.

“What’s your earliest memory of Dean?” is your next question.

Sam doesn’t answer right away. “Dad’s car,” he says. “Dean and I in the back seat.”

“What about before that?”

Sam takes even longer to answer, but you see the wheels turning. “Flashing lights,” he says quietly, to the rhythm of the clicking metronome. “Wet wood. Smoke and talking. He was bigger than I was.”

Is he talking about the fire? You completely forget to take notes. “Were there monsters there?”

His closed eyes flicker, like he’s looking for something printed on his eyelids. “No.”

He does remember.

“Where did the smoke come from, Sam?”

“There… was a fire?” He sounds uncertain.

“Remember the fire, Sam.”

His eyes flicker again, but his breathing stays steady with the metronome, so you decide it’s okay to press. “Where did the fire start, Sam?”

“In my room.” His fingers twitch on the armrest.

“And your mother came to your room?”

“Yes.”

“She saw the fire?”

“She tried to put it out.” Sam’s fingers twitch again.

“But she couldn’t?” You think he responds better to yes-or-no questions.

“She tried to yell. But there was smoke.”

You wait for a few clicks of the metronome before asking the next question, knowing it’ll stress him out. “What happened next, Sam?”

“She fell.” His breathing picks up. “She fell in the fire. She said my name. She tried to get to me. Her hands are on fire. She doesn’t have hair. She’s… not moving…” His hands are shaking, but you steel yourself against his distress.

“What’s happening now, Sam?”

“I can’t breathe. Dad’s shouting, it’s too loud, he’s too rough. I’m outside with Dean…” He’s almost panting for breath now, the metronome completely drowned out.

“Sam. Sam, listen to me, listen to my voice. Take a deep breath. You can wake up now. You’re awake, in three… two… one…” You switch off the metronome.

Sam gasps and bolts upright. You’re startled to see tears streaming down his face. He blinks, disoriented, before finally fixing on your face.

“Sam,” you say, realizing an instant too late that it’s probably not best to have this conversation so fresh out of deep hypnosis. “Your mother died in a fire.”

Sam doesn’t seem able to say anything.

“There wasn’t a demon. There was never a demon.”

“But…”

“You were so little, Sam. You were too young to understand what you saw, so your mind decided demons and monsters were the cause.”

Sam stares at you.

You can see the revelation dawning in his face.

Sam buries his face in his hands and cries.

~

Four days has been long enough to convince yourself of Sam’s emotional stability. In that time, he hasn’t seen a single one of his usual monsters.

In the lobby, you’re reassuring Dean for the thousandth time that Sam is, in fact, going to be okay.

“Outpatient care is just as intensive as inpatient care,” you remind him sternly. “He can’t miss a day of therapy. And you need to make sure he takes his medication on time, but to be honest I don’t think he’ll be taking any at all within a month.”

Dean glances over at Sam, who’s getting the hug of his life from River Song. “Yeah, I know. It’s, you know… Just like that? He’s fixed?”

“I doubt it. He’ll have good days and bad days. I think the worst is behind him, but he still needs closure about his mother’s death. That’s still a traumatic memory for him, and it needs to be dealt with. You need to keep a close eye on him. He could have relapses.”

“I know. I will.”

You consider telling Dean what Sam said under hypnosis, and then forge ahead with it. “He remembers you, too.”

Dean finally makes eye contact with you. “He what?”

“He remembers you carrying him out of the house.”

Dean seems speechless. He looks back over at Sam, who’s standing by River’s desk and looking rather lost. You notice for the first time how long his hair has grown.

Without another word, Dean strides across the lobby and drags Sam into a tight hug.

They walk out.

River tries to swipe away a tear without smearing her eyeliner.

You go back upstairs.


	7. Fighting Fire With Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which there is finger painting and really bad psychoscience

On second thought, maybe painting wasn’t the best idea for a group activity.

Harry’s got blue smeared on his glasses and is laughing uncontrollably at Azula, who squeezes the tube again and shrieks with delight when the paint sprays out.

“Azula’s using all the blue paint!” Amy yells.

“No I’m not, there’s a blue one right there.”

“Yeah but I want THAT blue one!”

“You’re not even going to use it!”

Marlin’s dipped his fingers in gold paint and flicks it at Castiel when he’s not looking.

If you weren’t trying desperately not to laugh, you’d chastise him for it.

“Doctor! Azula’s hogging the blue paint!”

“I am not!”

Rory hands Amy another tube of paint, which Amy proceeds to get all over herself.

You glance down at the end of the table. Katy hasn’t touched any of the bright colors, and is instead staring curiously over Karkat’s shoulder. You edge closer.

“…is the hemospectrum,” Karkat explains patiently. “It’s Alternia’s caste system.”

“What does it mean?” Katy asks. You’ve never seen her so engaged.

“It means your place in society depends on what color your blood is. Here”—he points at something he’s painted—“is the bottom. Lowbloods have red, bronze, or yellow blood. Midbloods have… you know, green and lighter blue and whatever. Then the highbloods have dark blue or purple blood.”

Katy nods like it all makes sense (which it doesn’t, Karkat has tried to explain his “planet’s” convoluted society to you a thousand times and you still don’t get it). “So which one are you?”

Karkat rubs his face and leaves gray paint behind. “It’s a long story.” There’s a pause in the conversation as Amy gets loud about something again and they both glance down the table, and then Karkat picks up the conversation again. “You haven’t painted anything yet.”

Katy flicks her braid over her shoulder. “I don’t want to.”

“You’re supposed to.”

“I’m not going to, though.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Ugh. I keep forgetting your problem with authority. Look, just pick a stupid color and splash it around and tell them it’s your dead dad or whatever you’re here for.”

Katy stiffens, and you’re about to call security because you _know_ she’s about to fly off the handle, but then… she doesn’t.

Instead, she just swipes her hand in a puddle of white paint and smears it right across Karkat’s face.

Your eyes go wide.

Karkat instantly fires off a string of profanity-laced slurs and launches at Katy, who laughs – she did _what_ – and dodges him. She flings the rest of the white paint at him.

Karkat retaliates by snatching a tube of purple and crushing it. Paint explodes out, spraying Katy and everyone else in a three-foot radius.

Marlin bursts out laughing and flicks a handful of gold paint at both of them.

An instant later, you duck as a fine spray of blue flies by your head.

Yeah.

Painting was definitely a bad group activity.

~

When the pandemonium settles down, you realize just how bad of an idea it was.

Azula is curled up beneath the table, hyperventilating and shaking, with droplets of red paint on her face and hands. You realize that red is probably a “fiery” color to her, and getting it on her was what set her off.

When her panic attack has lasted eighteen minutes and Azula is showing no signs of calming down, even with Rory’s soothing presence, Minerva arrives with a syringe. Rory carries the unconscious Azula back to her room.

You slip back off to your office and start digging through Azula’s file.

After the fire that killed her family, Azula locked into her helpless child-state. People were so eager to help her, she never grew up. None of her foster families recognized that she had regressed several years until she was thirteen and was unable to feed herself. Coupled with her paralyzing phobia of fire, the foster care system had no choice but to sign her over to the government, which in turn put her in a juvenile mental facility.

It did absolutely no good whatsoever.

Azula remained helpless and childlike, and was bullied by the other patients so frequently that the staff kept her room locked at all times for her own safety. Azula found it difficult to relate to the other children this way, and her issues continued to grow.

As soon as she was legally allowed, Azula was transferred here to Hogwarts Psychiatric, spending the first few months in the phobic ward. (Because for whatever reason, the Admitting department decided her fear of fire was her most pressing issue. Useless department.) Treatments failed, and Azula was shuffled among the different wards a few times before landing in Ward 4.

You’ve always credited Azula’s improvement to your nurse team. Minerva’s motherly discipline, Rory’s calming methods, Donna’s I’ll-Just-Beat-The-Weakness-Out-Of-You attitude, and Jade’s sweet nature (and encyclopedic knowledge of medications) all combined to create a beautiful environment in your ward. With no one to feed her, Azula learned to eat by herself. Surrounded by adults, she learned to speak like one. You’ve considered her one of your greatest successes.

But her phobia persists.

You think you understand it. Azula wasn’t young, like Sam had been. Azula was eleven. She fully understood what was happening at the time, and the scars from that incident are still angry red burns on her mind. Somehow, someway, you know you have to treat it.

You lean back in your chair and sigh. Minerva’s voice comes over the intercom. “Doctor? Azula is stable. We’ve removed the paint. She should be fine when she wakes up.”

You switch off the intercom without replying and pick up the phone. You pause before dialing, weighing the pros and cons of who you’re about to call, and decide it’s worth it.

Jade’s exhausted voice answers. “H’lo?”

“All right, I _know_ you work overnight, and I know you’ll hate me forever, but we really need to talk, Jade.”

“Doctor?” Her voice becomes slightly more coherent. “Talk about what? Is something wrong? Do I need to be there?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I need your opinion on a medication change.”

“Whu… medication? Whose meds are we changing?” You hear her yawn.

“Azula’s. She had a panic attack today. Could we add a sedative to her daily doses?”

There’s a long silence on the other end.

“Um… Jade?”

Silence.

“If you’ve fallen back asleep I’m going to drive over there and make faces through your window.”

“No, I’m here. It depends on which sedative, I guess. And she should take nothing every day for a long time, that’s how you kill a liver.”

“It wouldn’t be long-term.”

“Then I can start seeing what I could order. But, Doctor, don’t you need a court order to change her medication? Azula’s a ward of the state. All her treatment requests need to go through the system.”

“That’ll take too long. This needs to be off the books.”

Jade pauses. “Um. So you’re asking me to break the law?”

“Only a little. For like a week.”

“Oh, well suddenly I feel so much better.”

“Jade, please. I know this will help her.”

“How? Suppressing her panic attacks with a sedative isn’t going to magically make her phobia go away.”

“Maybe not, but that’s why I was thinking we’d try cognitive-behavioral therapy.”

“Huh? Didn’t the phobia ward try that already?”

“It’s the first thing they did. Azula panicked. No matter how minor the trigger, she went into full-blown panic mode. They gave up.”

“So… if she’s on a sedative this time…” Jade catches on.

“…she’ll be less likely to panic when presented with a match or a candle, right.”

You can hear Jade sigh. You glance out at the common room. Marlin is watching Game of Thrones intently. You aren’t sure how he got hold of that show, but you’d better go turn it off before he sees the dragons. “So, can you help me with this, Jade?”

“I’ll see what we have,” she says, and you can hear the defeat in her voice. “If there’s one that won’t cross-react with her current medication, I’ll slip it in. Should I tell Rory about this? He dispenses the meds.”

“I’ll tell him.” You probably won’t. “Thank you, Jade.”

“Go away.”

“Be nice to me or I’ll come make faces in your window anyway.”

“You’re creepy.” She hangs up on you.

~

The change in Azula isn’t immediately obvious to a casual observer. She’s a little slower when she eats. Her eyes are glassier. When you ask her a question, it takes her a moment longer to answer, if she does at all. She doesn’t seem to be paying attention as much in group activities, and she’s just a little more quiescent to the nurses.

Azula’s in your office now, eyes half-lidded. You firmly believe Rory and Jade had a good time digging out the proper sedative for her. “We can’t use amytal, she’s already on diazepam and those cross-react.” “Well duh, no one’s used amytal since the 50’s.” “What about Nembutal?” “No. No, no, no. Nembutal is used for surgery and, in emergencies, seizures. Did you even _go_ to medical school, you enormous dork?”

In the end they decided on a seconal compound. According to Jade, it was the only sedative which wouldn’t cross-react too badly with Azula’s current anxiety meds. She’s only on a half-dose a day while you all watch for side effects, but so far it looks like it’s going to work.

“Azula,” you say, and then you have to say it a few more times before she looks up at you. “We’re going to talk about some of your fears today, is that okay?”

She blinks twice, slowly, before nodding.

“Good.” You take out a few lettered blocks and arrange them on the desk between you – E, I, F, and R. “Azula, can you rearrange these to spell a word?”

She pushes and switches the blocks for a few minutes, taking her time, turning them over to see if there are different letters on the other sides. Finally she nudges them into the proper arrangement and looks up at you.

“What word did you spell, Azula?”

“F…fire.” She sounds anxious, but nowhere near the panic she would usually have long since fallen into.

“That’s right, very good.” You put the blocks back into a drawer. “Do you remember your breathing exercises? Miss Minerva taught you a month or so ago. Let’s practice that together, shall we?”

After an interval of deep-breathing practice, you go for another route. You set out a sheet of paper and hand Azula a few markers. “We’re going to draw for a while,” you tell her. “What’s something you like? Something that makes you happy?”

Azula thinks about that. “Turtleducks.”

“Turtle… what?”

“Turtleducks.”

You wonder, but push it aside. “Can you draw a… a turtleduck for me, Azula?”

Azula takes a marker and pulls the top off. She sets it to the paper, but stops when it leaves a bright red streak. She picks up another, but that one is dark orange. A third is smoky gray and the fourth is yellow. She looks confused, and for a moment you wonder if you’re pushing too far.

But eventually Azula does pick up the yellow and draws something that looks like a duck with a turtle shell. She doesn’t cap the markers and abandons them on the desk. One – the gray one – rolls onto the floor. You examine her drawing. “It’s adorable, Azula. Where did you see a turtleduck before?”

“They aren’t real,” she says carelessly, and you feel a wave of relief and _oh thank God I don’t have to deal with another delusion._ “Zuko made them up.”

She’s never talked about Zuko before. Sometimes you doubt she even remembers him. Apparently you were wrong. “Did you play with Zuko often?”

“Sometimes. We fought a lot. He was too little to play with me. I was too rough.”

"Why did you fight?”

“Mother liked him better than me. Father liked me better than him.” She sniffles.

“Why do you think so?”

“She was always holding him. Father was always talking to me and teaching me things. He taught me how to swing on the monkey bars when we were at the park. Mother stayed home with Zuko. Then we went home.”

You wonder if her meandering story has any significance, but dismiss it. You can’t stop to take mental notes now. “Azula, I want you to take a look at this picture.” You slide one over the desk. It’s a stock image of someone smoking a cigarette. Azula looks down at it, her mind sluggishly processing the picture. “Do you know what’s happening in this picture?”

Azula reaches out and almost touches the image. “’It’s… uhhh… smoke. Smoking. Right?”

“That’s great,” you tell her. “How do you feel looking at these things?”

“Nervous,” she says slowly, not looking away from the picture.

“Would you like to stop for the day?”

She nods.

“Okay.” You put the picture back in your desk. “You did great today, Azula. You didn’t panic at all, you handled it very well. We’re going to do something similar tomorrow, but for today I want you to work on your breathing, okay?”

Azula blinks. “Okay,” she says.

~

She doesn’t eat much at meals, but Jade assures you that’s a typical side effect. When Harry talks to her, she doesn’t talk much back, which seems to agitate him. He says things about a Confundus charm and an Imperius curse, which you remember vaguely from your sessions with him, but as he isn’t upsetting Azula you let him alone. You know from personal experience that often, interfering with the patients’ interactions with each other just make things worse, and they usually end up resenting you for it.

After another two days, Jade and Rory agree to cut Azula’s sedative dose in half.

Five days after you woke up Jade in the middle of the day, Azula is sitting in your office again. She’s alert enough to be fiddling with a strand of hair – most of the patients have a nervous tic like this – but her eyes are still glazed.

“Hello, Azula,” you start off, like always. “How are you doing today?”

“Okay,” she says. Her responses aren’t quite so sluggish as they were previously. “I’m tired a lot.”

“That’s normal,” you tell her quickly, even though it technically isn’t. “I’m sure you’ll start sleeping better soon.” There, now it isn’t quite so much of a lie.

“Harry says someone put a spell on me.”

“I very much doubt that. Have you been practicing your breathing?”

You walk Azula through her breath exercises and ask a few more questions about her day-to-day activities, then tell her, “I want you to look at something, okay?”

She shrugs. You open a drawer, take out a box of matches, and set them on the desk between the two of you.

Azula’s gaze locks on the matches and she freezes.

“Remember your breathing,” you caution her, but she doesn’t seem to hear. “Azula? Listen to me. These are matches. Yes, they can cause fire. But they have never started one all by themselves. They just sit there quietly in a box until someone – a real, living human being – takes one out and starts a fire with it.”

Azula’s muscles are quivering with tension, but you can tell she’s paying attention.

“No one is using or holding these. Nobody’s even touching them, see? They cannot, and will not, hurt anyone.”

Azula’s started breathing again – shallow and fast, yes, but breathing.

You reach out and tap the box. The matches rattle a bit inside. You fully expect Azula to jump, but she doesn’t. “Do you see, Azula?” you continue quietly. “They aren’t doing anything. They can’t do anything. They aren’t evil or cruel. They’re little bits of wood with sulfur tips.”

Azula’s eyes have lost their panicked edge.

“Now Azula, I’d like you to open the box, take out one match, and snap it in half.”

And that’s exactly what she does.

~

It’s been exactly one week since the painting incident, and Azula is standing nervously beside you at the head of the mealtime table. The other patients are sitting down and waiting expectantly. Donna, Rory, and Minerva are off to the side, watching.

“Okay, I got it!” Jade emerges from the nurse’s station with a precariously balanced cake in one hand and a stack of paper plates in the other. “Is everybody here?”

While Jade counts heads and hands out plates, you take stock of Azula. Rory took her off the sedative two days ago, and aside from being somewhat jittery, Azula has returned to normal. Now, she looks nervous and bright-eyed, shifting and bouncing beside you. You told her she didn’t need to go through with this, but when Azula makes plans, she’ll follow through on them no matter what.

Jade finally sets down the cake in front of Azula. It’s a pretty ordinary cake, with bright green and yellow icing, and a tall, unlit candle right in the middle.

Silence falls on the table. Amy is grinning ear to ear. Castiel is watching Azula with more attention than he’s ever given you. Harry looks somewhat frightened. When Azula reaches out and picks up a lighter, he goes completely still.

You’d picked out a long lighter that goes out with a puff of breath so Azula wouldn’t be too close to the flame, and if she panicked and dropped it the flame would go out before it hit the floor. But she takes it with an iron fist and sets her finger on the lighter’s trigger.

You’re not sure, but you think Katy is holding her breath.

Azula holds the end of the lighter right next to the candle and squeezes the trigger.

A tiny golden flame _pop_ s into existence.

Carefully, Azula lights the candle, releases the trigger, and gives you the lighter back.

Everyone at the table bursts into cheers.

Jade flings her arms around Rory.

You take the lighter and release a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding.

Azula smirks. Just loud enough for you to hear over the noise: “Breathing, Doctor.” She leans down and blows out the candle.

You laugh and start to reply before Harry bowls over you and kisses Azula right on the lips.

~

Since Azula is a ward of the state, she has no family to stay with after her discharge, so she’s sent to a halfway house the next town over. She’ll continue her therapy there, get “grownup training” – learning to drive a car, do taxes, perform basic household chores and such – and eventually get a job and move out. You’re so terrifically proud of her you want to backflip out of the lobby and cartwheel through the parking lots, but you restrain yourself because that seems like a lot of effort and you’re not exactly young anymore and you’d probably smash through someone’s window.

“Did the house shuttle already pick her up?” River Song asks you as you walk (slowly and befitting a professional of your age and not at all skipping like a schoolgirl) through the lobby.

“Yeah, they got her this morning.”

“Ahh. I suppose I was at lunch. I wanted to see her off.”

“Well, she’s not gone forever,” you say, and have to pretend to notice something behind you because yeah, Azula is sort of gone forever.

“I suppose not. Harry’s going to miss her, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” you say, because it’s true. Harry had been moping around the ward all day, and after Azula left he went to his room and hadn’t come out for lunch or dinner. “All the more motivation to get himself discharged too, I guess.”

River’s eyes take a mischievous twinkle. “Oh, I think you underestimate the effects of fresh love too early wiped out. You’re going to have a handful of sad twenty-year-old-boy to deal with now.”

“You’ve got to stop reading romance novels at work. They’re warping your brain.”

“I think you’d like them. They’re all so dramatic, just like you.”

“God knows I’ve got enough drama.” You roll your eyes.

River chuckles. “Oh, and by the way, Doctor? I believe one of the board members is dropping by this week for a ‘surprise’ visit. You might want to prepare.”

You almost drop your briefcase. “What?! Which board member? What day? What do they think I did?” Thoughts of Azula’s sedatives fill your mind and you barely hold back a rush of panic. If they’ve found out about your illegal medicating of a patient... Forget _firing_ you, they can have you downright _arrested._ Jade, too. What were you thinking?

River shrugs, apparently oblivious to your imminent breakdown. “I think it’s going to be Jack Noir. They want to give you the scheduled date for Dr. Hawthorne’s visit, ‘in person’ for whatever reason.”

You stare at the floor. “Well,” you manage to say. “Thanks for letting me know, River. I’ll… I’ll be seeing you.”

Everything’s gotten so much better.

They can’t possibly find fault with you.

Can they?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> going to be a bit of a long wait for the next chapter guys sorry


	8. Wizard Angst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which i am really sorry i vanished for months, here have an angsty Harry Potter.

Harry’s done nothing but sulk since Azula left.

Maybe sulk isn’t the right word. Mope is more like it. He only grudgingly leaves his room for meals, and has gone back to moody silence in group. The rest of the day he spends watching out the window or sitting quietly by himself.

He’s not the only one, either. Most of your patients are getting quieter and more subdued. You think it’s finally hitting them that their friends are leaving, actually leaving, and not coming back, and it’s beginning to affect their morale.

It’s affecting yours, too. Azula’s been gone two days.

You try to address the problem during group. “Amy”—you call on her because she’s usually the most talkative in group—“how do you feel about Azula leaving?”

Amy looks down and plays with her bright red hair.

“Do you feel sad that she’s gone?” you prod.

She shrugs halfheartedly and eventually nods, her gaze fixed on the floor.

You call on someone else. “Marlin? What do you think?”

He’s staring out the window, not even pretending to pay attention.

“We’re happy she got to go home, aren’t we?” You’re desperate now.

“Didn’t go home,” Katy says suddenly.

You give an appropriate pause, but Katy doesn’t say anything else. “What do you mean, Katy?”

“Azula didn’t have a home. It was destroyed by the Capitol. She went somewhere else. But I guess she’s happy.” She shrugs.

Everyone seems to be doing a lot of shrugging lately.

“Well, I think it wasn’t the Capitol that burned down Azula’s house, but thank you for your input, Katy.”

“They burned down Sam’s house too,” she mumbles defensively before turning her head away.

“Doctor?” Rory’s leaning out of the nurse’s station. “Phone call for you.”

You sigh and dismiss the silent group.

~

You sigh again fifteen minutes later and hang up the phone.

“It was Black’s parole officer,” you tell Minerva, who probably doesn’t care.

“Who?”

“Harry’s godfather, you know, Sirius Black. The one in prison.”

“Ah. What’s he done now?”

“He died.”

Minerva blinks in surprise. “Oh. Oh dear. What does that mean for Harry?”

You rub your eyes. “Not much. He’s just… you know. More alone than he was two hours ago.”

Harry’s parents died when he was two, leaving him with a neglectful aunt and abusive uncle. Despite the fact that CPS eventually intervened and placed eleven-year-old Harry with the only other legal guardian he had – Black – you suspect the damage to his psyche had already been done. By the time Black was arrested for arson and manslaughter after burning down a neighbor’s house, Harry had a firm foothold in his delusions.

Minerva’s eyes soften. You know she likes Harry better than the other patients. “Poor boy,” she comments.

“Especially with Azula gone. Amy says he liked her ever since he met her, but she didn’t talk to him.”

“Well, I suppose the halfway house would let Azula call him once in a while, wouldn’t they?”

“I guess.” You glance out at the common room. Harry hasn’t moved from his chair, though everyone else has dispersed. “I don’t know what good that will do, but…” You trail off uncertainly. You’re running out of unorthodox methods to cure your patients with. By all rights, Azula should still be here – traditional exposure therapy often took months or years to completely cure a phobia. It shouldn’t have worked on her as quickly as it did, and yet she seemed cured when she left.

“Should we tell him about Black?” Minerva asks you tentatively.

You hesitate. Harry’s an adult, and legally has no need to know what happened to his former guardian. Besides, it could send him into an emotional tailspin and make his recovery that much harder (during a time when emotional tailspins would not make you look terribly valuable to the board).

On the other hand, Sirius was the only family Harry had had. You feel guilty just thinking about withholding that kind of information.

“Not yet,” you finally say.

Minerva nods.

~

“Tell me about your godfather, Harry.” You tap your pen against your notepad.

Harry stares moodily at his hands and refuses to answer.

“He got into trouble a lot, didn’t he?” you prompt, glancing at an impressive rap sheet on Sirius Black. _Possession of narcotics, assault on a police officer, possession of stolen goods, grand theft auto, assault and battery, fleeing the scene of an accident…_

_Arson._

_Manslaughter._

You wonder if Harry knows about those charges.

He’s still staring at his hands. There’s a pale scar on his forehead from the car accident that left him an orphan.

“What about your aunt and uncle?” you suggest next. This is a tricky area. You’ve worked in the juvenile department long enough to know that bringing up abusive caregivers can easily trigger younger patients into panic, but you hope Harry isn’t one of those cases. “What can you tell me about them?”

Harry shrugs. _(Again, the shrugging.)_ “Muggles,” he spits.

You’ve heard him say this word before to almost everyone. As far as you can tell, it just means “anyone who isn’t Harry Potter.” You wait a few moments, but Harry says nothing more.

“Why did you leave your aunt and uncle’s, Harry?” Okay, this is irresponsible of you, but you’re tired of not getting answers.

“Cause they starved me.”

His bluntness surprises you, but you press on. At least he isn’t having a freakout. “They starved you,” you repeat with little inflection. Active listening rarely works on your patients, but sometimes it can keep them talking.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “And they made me sleep under the stairs, and sometimes they hit me but not much. Sirius didn’t hit me. Sirius wasn’t mean.”

That… that was a lot more than you were hoping for. You scribble a note on your notepad. “Did Sirius starve you?”

“No, no. But sometimes weird people would come by. All twitchy and ugly.”

You dimly recall reading something about Sirius selling drugs. “What did Sirius do with them?”

“He gave them magic potions and they’d leave. He left too, sometimes.”

You scribble _magic potions?_ on your notepad. “Why did Sirius leave sometimes?”

Harry shrugs _(AGAIN)._ “He said the bad guys were looking for him and he had to lay low. He’d send me to stay with the lady next door. I hated her, her house was all pink. She had about twenty cats.”

Something feels off. You glance at Sirius’ rap sheet again. _Set fire to the home of neighbor Dolores Umbridge. Pleaded guilty. Received 10 years in prison._ “Was this neighbor… Miss Umbridge?”

“She was always clearing her throat and making rules!” Harry snaps. “Always with her _hem hem_ and her _that’s not permitted, Harry,_ and… and…” He suddenly pauses. “And always telling me I was lying.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. Umbridge was always telling me that… that I must not tell lies.” Harry finally looks up at you for the first time since he sat down. “But I wasn’t lying, though. I kept telling her to block up the fireplace or people could break in through the Floo network, but…” His voice trails off.

“Did you ever tell Sirius this?”

“He just laughed and told me to keep causing trouble. And then he’d leave me with her again the next time he left.” Harry rubs angrily at his scar. “I didn’t like her anymore. So I cast a spell and her house Vanished!”

Your heart drops like a stone.

_No._

“Incendio!” Harry says enthusiastically, like a toddler who just learned a swear word. “It’s not a Vanishing spell, but it worked. And when Sirius went away, I didn’t go there again. Not ever.”

Your mind is reeling. You can’t even take notes. _Harry_ set the fire. Harry Potter set the fire. Why did Black plead guilty? He must have been trying to protect Harry… maybe he didn’t see that Harry was ill…

It feels like an enormous weight has settled in your stomach. Sirius may have been a dreadful parent, but on paper he seems to always have had Harry’s best interests at heart. He’d died in prison today to take the fall for his godson.

You will help fix this boy if it’s the last thing you do.

~

Harry follows close at your elbow as you lead him through the hospital corridors. “Why are we going outside?” he asks. “We only go outside as a group.”

You eye Haymitch, the security guard who’s required to escort you. He looks only slightly interested. “You’re going to teach me about magic,” you assure Harry.

His face lights up and he bounds beside you with renewed vigor.

As a rule, you try to avoid encouraging your patients’ delusions. But you have no other ideas, and Harry’s sudden defiance and angst have given you fuel to burn, and hey, you’re feeling a little reckless.

You stand and wait for the elevator and the thought occurs to you that you should maybe call the police about Dolores Umbridge’s death, but you decide that would just make everyone’s lives a little too complicated. The three of you step in the elevator and you press a button and hope to God you’re doing the right thing.

~

The yard is fenced by a fifteen-foot-high chain link fence, but there isn’t barbed wire at the top, a fact for which you’re always vaguely grateful. This place feels enough like a prison as it is. A half-court basketball area sits at one end, and coarse crabgrass is growing up through nearly every crack in the paving stones. A few splintery benches sit around the perimeter, and there is a single pine tree in the corner. Management always talks about removing that stalwart little tree, but so far they’ve yet to act. You’re grateful for that, too. The stunted tree always seemed to be making an obscene gesture to the world, simply by being there.

Harry hasn’t shut up since the fence gate closed behind him.

“…wand chooses the wizard, that’s the important bit,” he continues, picking up a stick from under the tree and examining it carefully. “And every wand has to have a special core. It’s either a phoenix feather, a dragon heartstring, or a hair from a unicorn’s tail. Those are the three best cores. I mean, you can technically use other things, like Veela hair, but none of them work as well.”

You drift along behind him, taking notes and watching him carefully. Haymitch is standing by the gate, looking bored. Harry, on the other hand… you’ve never seen him so animated.

“A lot of wizards think that every core gives the wand a different trait. Phoenix-feather wands for instance are more destructive, they’re better at those kinds of spells. Unicorn-hair wands are better at, like, conjuring and vanishing spells. And dragon-heartstring wands make it easier to cast manipulation spells. Like growth spells and disarming spells and the like.” Harry picks up a six-inch twig, bending it experimentally.

“I don’t understand those words, Harry,” you say calmly. “Can you show me what those are?”

You spend a solid hour in the yard, calmly taking notes while Harry tries to show you magic. You always feel a bit cruel when you allow a patient to frustrate themselves out of a delusion. To you, it’s a bit like asking a small child to hold up eleven fingers.

It takes Harry nearly the entire hour you’ve allotted for this exercise to show signs of frustration. He’s shouting “Accio! _Accio!_ ” with growing anger at a snail on the pavement by the time you stop him. So far, you’d only spoken to prompt him, or ask clarification. Honestly, you never in your life thought you’d know so much about a broomstick sport.

“I think that’s enough for now, Harry,” you say gently, plucking the twig from his clenched fingers. “It’s almost time for dinner, we don’t want to be late.”

“I’m not finished,” he says tightly, all earlier enthusiasm gone.

“That’s all right. We can continue this tomorrow, all right?”

“It’s the wands. It’s their fault, they don’t have the right cores.”

“Do they now,” you hum and usher Harry back inside.

~

Harry’s frustration boils over quicker the next day.

“Lumos!” he half-screams, spittle flying. “Just… lumos, you stupid… WHY WON’T THIS WORK?”

You scratch a note into your clipboard, and then make the immediate mistake of looking up and meeting Harry’s eyes.

They narrow behind his glasses. “It’s YOUR fault!” he shouts. “YOU set me up to fail like this, didn’t you?!”

You take a deep breath. “Harry, I believe it’s time we were done for the day. We can continue tomorrow, if you’d like.”

“Like hell we’ll continue!” He flings the twig vaguely in your direction, and from the corner of your eye you see Haymitch stand up straight.

“Harry, I’ve never set you up for anything. I’m just asking you to demonstrate magic for me. Why would I set you up to fail at that?”

Harry stumbles over that for a moment, and then meets your eyes again with furious intensity. “It was _them,_ ” he hisses.

“It was… what?” Your neck prickles uncomfortably.

“The pills,” he snarls. “They’re… they’re suppressing my magic! Just like Marlin says they do!”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no.

Legally, any of your patients can refuse their medication. Most of them don’t, partly because most of them don’t know they have that right. You know it’s not unheard-of for delusional patients to believe their medication is hurting them; but once they stop, they rarely start again.

“No, Harry,” you bark. “They don’t do that. They’re anti-psychotics. They stop you from seeing things that aren’t real. Remember when you used to see things that weren’t there? Like those…” _What were those things called? The ones he used to see out his window?_ “The Thestrals?”

“No, they WERE there!” Harry yells. “But they’re gone, because I lost my magic! They think I’m a Muggle!”

You’re floundering. You weren’t expecting this. Frustrated patients often lash out and make excuses, sure, but… you still weren’t expecting this.

Haymitch finally comes over and firmly escorts Harry back inside.

The little pine tree in the corner sways a bit in sympathy.

~

“I’m not taking them,” Harry says flatly.

Jade gives you a despairing look. It’s just after dinner and everyone is lining up at the nurse’s station to get their meds, and you _should_ be heading home, but you need to handle this first. “Harry,” Jade says placatingly, “if you don’t like these anymore, Rory and I can find something different for you, but you really shouldn’t just stop taking anti-psych—”

“I’M NOT TAKING THEM.”

The room falls silent, except for Katy’s shallow gasp.

You slip into the nurse’s station, locking it behind you, and lean down next to Jade. “I have to talk to you, when you have a moment,” you tell her. She sighs and sets the paper cup of pills on the table beside her. “It’s all right, Harry, you can go,” she tells him.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, Jade rounds on you. “What did you do?”

You wince. This is, sort of, your fault. “I was trying to let him, you know, burn himself out on the magic thing. I’ve been asking him to try and show me, and he’s been failing of course, and I was hoping if he got frustrated enough his delusions would start breaking down but he just got very angry and I think—”

“Stop.” Jade pinches the bridge of her nose. “Stop. Just stop. You let a delusional teenager have free reign _with_ his delusions, you made him angry, and now he’s going cold turkey on mind-altering medication. Is that the SparkNotes of what happened?”

You wince again. “Basically, yes.”

Jade releases her nose and stares you down. (Why are all your nurses so intimidating? You’re supposed to be the one in charge here.) “You know the side effects of quetiapine withdrawal. Nausea, dizziness, insomnia, m—”

“Muscle twitching and rapid heart rate, yes, Jade, I’m aware.” You rub the back of your neck. “I’m honestly more worried about the antidepressant withdrawal.”

Jade’s face goes white. “I. I hadn’t even thought about those.”

“Keep an eye on him. Keep both eyes on him. I have to figure out what to do.” You head back out the door. “Make sure Donna knows, too.”

Jade sighs long-sufferingly. “She’s going to shout at you in the morning.”

“I know.”

You go home, followed the whole way by a nagging feeling of impending doom.

Azula's only been gone three days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this did not go the way i planned, what even


	9. Paved With Good Intentions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Castiel does that squinty thing we all know and love

You’re so preoccupied with watching Harry that you almost forget you have other duties.

Like, for instance, paying attention in individual therapy.

You honestly can’t recall what Amy was telling you about ten minutes ago. You don’t even know if you’ve seen Katy yet, and honestly you were surprised when Castiel came into your office because you were expecting Azula. It took you a solid eight seconds of mental fumbling before you could remember Azula was gone, and an additional six for you to grab a pen and scratch her name off your schedule.

You’re still staring out the one-way mirror at Harry as Castiel gives the usual answers – no he isn’t sleeping more than six hours a night, no he still doesn’t want to take his medication, yes he’s still an angel of God sent to Earth, yes he still hears the “other angels” in his head. You scribble absently at your clipboard, pretending to write down his responses, but your thoughts are with Harry. Will you be able to see signs of drug withdrawal slowly, or will it hit him all at once in a bundle of psychosis? Maybe he’ll be one of the few patients who can handle it with no more than a few bumps along the way – but no, no, there was that one time Harry missed two pills and spent the entire night throwing up, so there goes that hope. You feel like you’re watching a train fly off a bridge in slow motion.

Belatedly, you notice that Cas has stopped talking. You clear your throat and dismiss him early, hoping he didn’t notice. You can’t force Harry to take his meds. All you can do now is help your other patients and hope for the best.

You pull up Castiel’s file on your computer. Apparently, he’d had issues with psychosis and delusional disorders when he was a teenager, but they had gone away after he had seen a psychiatrist and gotten treatment. His symptoms hadn’t returned until he was – you click down a few pages – thirty-three. His wife Amelia had by that time developed some rare form of thyroid cancer, and Castiel spent most of his time taking care of her. You scroll down a little more, noting a few missed prescriptions around that time. Perhaps he missed them due to caring for his wife, or maybe he simply couldn’t pay for both his medication and hers.

You click down another page. From what you can gather, Amelia Novak’s decline lasted just under a year. After her death, Castiel’s symptoms resurfaced with a vengeance. He’d finally been assigned to Hogwarts after he’d been apprehended in the intensive care unit of the hospital where his wife died, where he had been approaching critical patients and trying to heal them or “assist” them on their way to Heaven. He’d been here ever since.

You chew on the end of your pencil. Cas hasn’t taken medication since he walked through the doors of Ward 4. It would be nearly impossible to get him to agree to it by now. You could try to reason with him – but you’ve been trying that for going on three years now, and you’ve gotten nowhere. Besides, look where that got you with Harry.

You glance back at the common room. Harry is staring at the ancient TV, frowning and rubbing his lightning-bolt scar with one hand. _The first symptom of antidepressant withdrawal is often a persistent headache,_ your med-school brain reminds you helpfully.

Castiel Novak’s file is burning your eyes. You shut the computer down and ruffle your hair in frustration. Patients who refuse their medication are some of the most delicate and difficult situations you’ve ever encountered, simply because you can’t make them do anything. Even if they’re here on a court order and need your signature on a discharge paper before they can leave (and nearly all your patients are), they all have the right to refuse medication.

You don’t know what to do.

The train starts to fall.

~

You send Harry to his room to sleep at 5:00 PM after he hasn’t been able to keep food down since breakfast. Everyone pretends not to watch him go, casting little side glances that people do when they don’t want to look like they’re staring. Marlin is biting his nails again. You were hoping he’d quit that.

Castiel is sitting in your office, toying with one of the ties of his trench coat. Technically you aren’t supposed to allow patients to wear their “outside clothes” (the ones they were wearing when first admitted) inside, but it’s a comfort item for Castiel and he seems calmer when wearing it, so you figure why not.

You get right down to business.

“Castiel,” you begin with no preamble, “who was Amelia?”

He looks confused and glances out at the common room.

“Not Amy Pond,” you clarify. “Amelia. Your wife.”

He stiffens.

You pull out a black-and-white photograph from the filing cabinet and slide it across the table. “Does she look familiar?”

Castiel looks at it, half-squinting in the way he does when he’s concentrating, but he says nothing.

“Do you remember marrying her?” you press. Amelia Novak’s face smiles up at him from the photograph. “She was beautiful.”

Castiel’s hands knot in the rough canvas of his trench coat, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the picture.

“She wasn’t an angel, though, was she?” You reach over and turn the photograph around to look at it.

“She was,” he says in a flat monotone. Well, at least you’re getting somewhere.

“I don’t think she was,” you correct, and dig out another photograph. You’d lifted it from Amelia’s memorial page on the Internet – in it, she’s lying in a hospital bed with Castiel beside her. Both are smiling at the camera. “She got sick, didn’t she?” 

He falls silent again, staring at the glossy image.

“You had to take care of her,” you prompt.

Castiel is still silent, hands clenched in his lap.

“Angels don’t get sick, Castiel.”

His head bows and his shoulders shake, just ever so slightly.

“Your wife wasn’t an angel, and neither are you.”

The world explodes in sound and pain as you’re knocked out of your chair. The side of your head hits the desk and everything goes fuzzy, but you hear shouting, clattering, stomping, screaming, and an unreasonably loud bang as something heavy falls to the ground. It might be you. You can’t tell.

Someone drags you to your feet and the shouting muffles behind a slamming door. Donna is in your face shouting. Everyone is shouting and blood is dripping from your nose and _could everyone please just stand still for five seconds, please._

You realize that you’re standing up and you immediately locate your chair and collapse into it. Everyone has stopped shouting, it seems, except Donna.

“…did you do to set him off? Stop bleeding on everything, good God!” She’s handed you a tissue and is glancing outside nervously. You follow her gaze and notice commotion in the nurse’s station just in time to see Castiel fall limp under a needle in Rory’s hands.

“What happened?” you ask, because to be honest you’re still quite dazed and your voice sounds funny with the blood in your nose. Talking causes another warm gush, and you press the tissue back in place.

“Well I don’t bloody know, do I?” Donna huffs. “Do you even know how many times he hit you?”

“Only once, I think. I hit the desk on the way down.” You peel away the tissue and immediately put it back.

Donna takes your chin and inspects your face carefully until apparently satisfied. Then: “This is bad.”

“What, my face? It’s just my face, Donna, he didn’t hit quite that hard.”

“I mean the fact that he hit you at all.”

Your blood goes cold when the realization hits you.

Castiel hit you.

More importantly, _one of your patients attacked you._

The Board would see that as trouble. This could get you axed.

“Well… We could… pretend it didn’t happen?” you offer weakly.

Donna frowns and nods at the presumably large and blooming bruise on your face. You decide you want to avoid mirrors for a while. “There’s no hiding that. And if the Board takes it into their heads to ask the other patients what happened, that’ll get you in double hot water.”

You grit your teeth, ignoring a twinge of pain in your jaw. “I can talk to him. Castiel. I can still fix this.”

Donna smacks the back of your head. “Lot of sodding good you did just now with him! Ace job. _Molto bene.”_

You sigh. “We’ll handle this tomorrow. I’m going to put some ice on this.”

“Go home,” Donna says sharply. “We’ll handle the patients. Just go home.”

You do.

~

When you come in the next morning, you nearly startle River Song out of her chair.

“What happened to you?” she gasps, grabbing your chin and making you wince. “Did you get in a fight? Was it with that snarky radiologist, you know the one, he dyes his hair blonde? I knew you two were nemeses…”

You extricate your face from her sharp fingernails. “Really, River, ha, got it in one. That damn radiologist. Right. Look, I’m running late, gotta go, really though don’t go, heh, blabbing this about, right, okay,” and then the elevator doors shut behind you because you are _not_ taking the stairs while your face is purple.

A few floors and a card swipe later and you’re back in Ward 4 and wow, er, all four nurses are standing there looking at you and your patients are nowhere to be seen.

“Um,” you say, and then, “good morning?”

Rory steps forward and holds out a file and _oh god what if someone died?_ Wouldn’t they have at least called you? Or no, wait, what if the Board heard about everything and they’re firing you and Rory is just trying to offer emotional support?

You take the file and cautiously open it.

This is… Castiel Novak’s file?

“Doctor,” Jade begins softly, “we’ve made arrangements to have Castiel transferred to Saint Gabriel’s upstate. It just needs your signature.”

You stare at her, and then back at the file.

Minerva speaks up. “If a patient is violent once, he’ll be violent again, regardless of the circumstances of the first incident. We are not equipped to handle violent patients, but Saint Gabriel’s is. They also specialize in religious delusions.”

You flip to the back of the file. There it is, in airtight legal terms.

_It is my professional medical opinion that Castiel Novak’s illness has progressed past the point of assistance from Hogwarts Psychiatric Health Facility. The aforementioned patient will be transferred to Saint Gabriel’s Treatment Center as soon as resources are available…_

There’s a blank space at the bottom for your signature.

You snap the file shut. “I’m not going to sign this.”

The nurses exchange tired looks.

“He’s not hopeless,” you argue. “We have the resources to help him!”

“You’ve got a big neon sign on your face that says not,” Donna points out pragmatically.

“Transferring him doesn’t mean you’re giving up,” Jade says. “It’s just… recognizing that maybe someone else can help him better.”

You stare down at the file. You know they’re just trying to help, but you can’t bear the thought of sending Castiel away.

Rory adds, “I put together a set of reports in there, they give details on how he’s been declining over the last two years. The Board won’t have any reason to investigate further once they take a look at it.”

You absently flip the file back open and locate the neat stack of papers, sorted by date and stapled together. You don’t even recognize most of these reports, and you have a sneaking suspicion that Rory typed a good number of these up himself last night.

“Please, just sign it,” Jade says, so softly you can hardly hear her. “We don’t want anyone getting hurt. Least of all you.”

Your jaw throbs in agreement.

~

The bus takes Castiel to Saint Gabriel’s early the next morning, before you get to work, so you don’t see him before he leaves. He hadn’t said a word to you since the incident, apologetic or otherwise. You understand.

Amy Pond asks about him at group.

“He went to a different doctor,” you tell everyone. They seem satisfied with that.

No one comments about the bruise on your face. They don’t need to, obviously. With the exception of Harry, they were all there when it happened.

A few hours later you get a confirmation phone call from Saint Gabriel’s. Castiel arrived and is settling in, and you hang up knowing you probably will never hear from him again.

There’s a trending article on some popular news site.

**YOUNG STARK – SOWING WILD OATS OR LEADING DANGEROUS LIFESTYLE?**

You read the headline and see a picture of… yep, that’s Tony. You close the browser before you can read the rest of the article and try desperately not to feel like a failure.

You fail for about ten minutes before the door opens and Minerva pokes her head in.

“Have you seen Katy Everdeen in the past few hours?” she asks.

The train crashes and goes up in flames.


	10. Bread and Circuses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wow this is hella late and i am hella sorry

You try not to panic, but from the way a nurse looked at you when you flew past her 

on the stairs, you aren’t doing a good job.

You do end up finding Katy at River Song’s desk after about five minutes of 

searching, though, and you spare an instant to thank yourself for not letting Rory call 

security to look over the cameras.

“Katy,” you say as calmly as you can with your racing heart, “come on, we missed you at lunch. You must be hungry.”

Katy shrugs and plays with one of River’s many squeezy stress-balls. “Not really.”

River is giving you a look that you can only imagine is what a tiger looks like when no one is around to hear you scream for your life. You don’t look her in the eye as you guide Katy out of her chair and herd her towards the elevators.

You’re going to get an earful from her later, and not the flirty fun kind.

~ 

Katy’s little escape attempt – success? – has jarred you out of your funk after Castiel’s departure, and you spend a few hours after dinner in your office rooting through files. Files are your friend these days. You vaguely remember something about a violent incident that prompted Katy’s admittance, but the details escape you—

There. _Katniss Everdeen, age twenty. Caregiver: mother. One younger sister, age seventeen. Originally diagnosed with childhood bipolar disorder, changed to schizophrenia when she was fifteen, and finally at eighteen it seems all her doctors had settled on paranoid delusional disorder._

You dig further down – for whatever reason, Katy’s files haven’t been moved to electronic servers, so you’ve got several years’ worth of hospital admittance charts and therapist notes spread out over your desk when Donna walks in unannounced. “Minerva tells me we had another incident today,” she says without any real venom. “With Katy. What happened?”

“Go ask Minerva,” you mumble, scanning a discharge sheet from six years ago.

Donna snatches the sheet out of your hand and gives it a dismissive once-over. “She’s going over some things with Jade before she goes home and I don’t want to bother her.”

You sigh and reach for the next document. “She got out of the Ward again. I’m not sure how. We might need to get security tightened up again. She didn’t get far,” you add hastily, seeing Donna working up to deliver a diatribe, “she got to River’s desk and that’s it, but yes I know we can’t be having that again and I’m having a talk with Haymitch but right now I’m going to focus on some intensive therapy for her okay?”

Donna huffs and puts the sheet back on your desk. “If you get punched again, I’m not pulling her off you.”

“Deal.” You wave her off, suddenly distracted by the documents you were looking for. You hardly hear the door close behind her.

It’s a police report from two years ago. From what you can drag out of the dull, taciturn report, Katy had attacked a student at her high school. She had “refused to cooperate” with campus police and it seems she’d only narrowly managed to avoid being charged with assault on an officer. You bite your lip and identify the other student – Peter Mellark. You recognize that name – Katy would have been dating him at the time of the incident.

You wonder if it’s too late to try and get Katy’s mother on the phone.

~ 

Mrs. Everdeen doesn’t pick up the first time you call her cell.

Or the second, fifth, or ninth, either.

She also doesn’t answer your emails.

When you dial her home phone number, a young girl’s voice answers – but the instant you get the words “doctor at Hogwarts Psychiatric” out, the line goes dead.

So you’re now on the phone with Peter Mellark.

“It’s been kind of a long time,” he’s telling you nervously. “I mean. We dated in high school but that’s as far as anything went between us.”

“I understand,” you say in your most calming tone. “Unfortunately, Mrs. Everdeen does not seem keen on discussing her daughter with us, and Katy has few other friends.” There’s a pause and you capitalize on it. “Of course, we understand that this is a very sensitive matter for you, Mr. Mellark, and if it makes you uncomfortable there is no need to continue.”

That does it. “No, no, it’s okay. It’s just, you know, been a long time. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

“Can you tell me a bit about that? I’m just going to take a few notes, nothing will be recorded otherwise, is that all right?”

“Yeah, of course, that’s fine.” You hear him draw a deep breath. “It was about two years ago, we were at school. I hadn’t even done anything, she just came up to me in the halls and started accusing me of things, just… wild things I’d never even think of doing.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“Well… a lot of things. She claimed I was cheating on her, and then like, the next sentence she’d be saying I was spying on her for the government, and then she was shouting to everyone that I had tried to choke her to death.” He takes a shaky breath, and you let him pause before going on. “Everyone kind of knew she had… problems, but this, they said later it was called a psychotic break, and no one really knew what to do. It’s not the kind of thing you can call an ambulance for, right?”

It _is,_ actually, but you don’t bother lecturing him about that now. “The campus police were involved, correct?”

“Not at first. A few teachers came over and tried to calm her down but she kept yelling and getting more worked up. I thought she was going to go after one of them, so I tried to grab her hands.” He falls silent again, and you can tell this time he won’t continue without a little prodding.

“The police report says she assaulted you.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what they called it.” He doesn’t go on.

You wonder if what you’re about to suggest is a good idea, and forge ahead without talking yourself out of it. “Mr. Mellark, would you be open to coming down here for a meeting with Katy and myself?”

Peter is silent for so long that you check the phone to see if the connection is still there. Then: “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Katy has made tremendous progress.” You resist the urge to ruffle your hair. “The situation would be highly supervised. I just think it would be wise for both of you to get some… closure.”

Your bruised cheekbone aches as you stifle a surprise yawn. You check the clock and realize it’s a quarter past nine.

“I’ll think about it,” Peter says finally.

~ 

Peter comes in the next day.

He’s blond and stocky and has a confident handshake, but you don’t miss the way his eyes dart around the lobby, sliding right past River Song. He shifts his weight and jumps when he notices you approaching. His eyes flick to the bruised face that you’re still unable to hide, then away.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Mellark. Were you able to get in touch with Mrs. Everdeen or Primrose?”

He shakes his head. “Neither of them pick up when I call anymore, I sort of gave up.”

You nod in understanding. “Well, I’ve asked Katy to wait for us in my office. If you would please come with me?” You practically bully him into the elevators, not giving either of you a chance to panic about the meeting to come. You studiously avoid eye contact with River as you pass. She’d shouted at you last night until one of the crisis counselors had come in to see what the noise was about.

Katy is fiddling with a loose thread in her shirt hem when you and Peter enter. She’s tying knots in it – the clever, complex knots she ties when she’s stressed or nervous. When she sees Peter, there’s a split second of deer-in-the-headlights before her eyes drop to the floor and her face settles into an impassive mask.

“Hi, Katy,” Peter says slowly. You can tell he’s trying to be casual, but anxiety runs through his words. “I uh. Haven’t seen you in a while. How’re you doing?”

“Your nose isn’t bleeding anymore,” she says flatly.

“Yeah. No. It’s been two years. It’s… it’s stopped bleeding by now.”

“Oh.” She keeps staring at the ground.

You decide it’s time to intervene. “How did you two meet?” you ask, sliding into your desk chair. Peter finds a spare seat and sits quickly.

“School,” Katy answers shortly.

Peter’s eyes are fixed on his hands. His leg bounces uneasily. “Yeah, we were in… what, Mrs. Trinket’s class?”

Katy shrugs.

You tap you pen on the desk for no real reason other than to fill the silence. Waiting is usually a very good way to coax people to tell you more. Nobody likes to feel inadequate, and making them think their answer is insufficient is almost guaranteed to get you more words.

Peter breaks first. “We uh… got paired together in this stupid project, she split us into pairs – it was geography, the class – and we were supposed to… uh, take different parts of the world and present them at the end, and I don’t know, we just started talking.”

Katy’s staring contest with the floor continues. You have to involve her in the conversation. “Katy, what was your part of the project?”

“Nothing,” she snaps, too quickly. “I did nothing and Peter did it all.”

Peter glances at me helplessly. “She… it was a bad time, she’d just switched therapists and…”

“I’m right here!” Katy shouts.

Peter’s mouth shuts with an audible _clip._ Through your office window, you notice Rory look your way. You jump in quickly. “You two are here to talk with each other. Please do continue to do so.” That’s reasonable, you think. A gentle reprimand to Peter, a quiet validation of Katy. Very professional of you.

Peter’s leg picks up its bouncing pace. “Right,” he says, but doesn’t say anything else.

Katy finally breaks her floor-staring vigil to look at him out the corner of her eye. “What did you tell them?” she asks in a monotone.

“Tell who? The people at school?”

“The Capitol.”

Peter throws you a confused glance. Apparently, Katy’s delusion of her mysterious “Capitol” enemy had developed after her final encounter with Peter. You open your mouth to try and give an explanation, but Katy cuts you off.

“You told them everything!” She isn’t slouching in her chair now, but she isn’t quite standing, either. “You told them about me, and my sister! What did you tell them about Prim?!”

You just barely notice Rory hurry into the nurse’s station. No one else in the common room seems to hear Katy, a fact for which you are eternally grateful.

“I…” Peter stumbles for words. “Katy, I haven’t told anyone a thing about Prim! I haven’t even talked to her since I was going out with you!” He manages to keep his voice at a reasonable level, but Katy fires off again.

“You’re watching her! You’re… you’re watching me!” Her eyes are wide and panicked now. “They got you, Peter, they hijacked you, can’t you see?”

“Katy!” You finally manage to catch up. “Peter is only here because I asked him to be here. Remember your breathing techniques, and we’ll…”

Her right hook catches Peter across the jaw.

~ 

Peter understandably refuses to return.

In fact, he doesn’t even pick up when you call. You sigh and set the phone back in its cradle. It was a long shot, anyway.

Katy is sleeping off the sedative that Rory had had the foresight to prepare as soon as he heard raised voices. Thanks to him, Peter suffered nothing more than a bruised jaw. Minerva wanted him to let her have a look, but he’d raced out of the building before Katy had even been knocked out.

Rather than sit at your desk and shuffle papers around, you decide to have a long talk with Katy in group tomorrow. You hope the group setting will keep her truthful about the encounter. And at the very least, you’ll have to switch her meds. Katy takes them every day, and the cocktail of pills should be doing something, but she seems no better than when she arrived.

~ 

Group is a quiet affair. Word seems to have gotten out among your remaining patients, and they’re all giving you quick sideways looks like your cat does when he’s torn something in your room to shreds and is awaiting punishment.

You dive right in. “Katy had a visitor yesterday.” Katy is staring vacantly into space. “I assume you all knew that.”

Amy nods and breaks the tension. “Did she… I mean, Katy, you didn’t hit him, did you?”

Katy doesn’t answer.

Marlin fidgets. “Katy…” he starts, but she cuts him off with a sudden glare.

You zero in. “Marlin, if you want to share something with the group, go right ahead. This is a safe space.”

He twists his fingers together. “Uhh… Well, it’s kind of a… um…” To your surprise, Marlin looks to Karkat.

Karkat glares at him with jaundiced eyes. “You weren’t supposed to tell, idiot.”

“Would you like to share something, Mr. Vantas?” you ask.

He exhales sharply and waves a hand at Katy. “Ask her where her meds really go,” he snaps, and it feels as though someone’s pulled the rug out from under your stomach.

Katy sits up straight. “You said you wouldn’t tell!” she almost shouts.

Before you can react, Marlin is tugging Katy’s arm, dragging her back to her seat. Karkat is shouting back. “I didn’t tell anything! I’m done keeping your stupid secret, and you’re the one who got in a stupid fight in the first place! Do you know what happens when the… the grownups find out?”

(For some unfathomable reason, all the authority figures in Karkat’s life fall under his mental category of “grownups.” You have yet to figure out why.)

Katy lets Marlin drag her back to her chair, and looks in your direction without looking you in the eye. “I flush them,” she says, hardly above a whisper. “I’m not sorry.”

You draw a deep breath. “And why did you flush your pills, Katy?”

“Don’t want them.”

“Katy, you don’t have to take them if you don’t want to. That’s a hospital rule.”

“What’s the difference,” she says. It isn’t a question, but you answer it anyway.

“Well, this whole time we thought you were taking them. That altered the way we treated you.”

Amy has been looking at Katy in shock. “Katy, you can’t be sneaky like that! Being sneaky is mean to the nurses and the Doctor.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice a silent Harry look up.

Amy goes on. “I mean, they might have a lot of rules, and it seems like they don’t understand you, or care about you, but they do. Nurse Rory cares about me. Nurse Minerva cares about Harry. And we all care about you and want you to get better!”

Katy drops her gaze to the ground.

There’s a solid minute of silence. You’re content to let it tick by.

In a very quiet, small voice, Katy finally says, “If I started taking them, do you think Peter would come back?”

~ 

With some careful finagling – and only after extracting an ironclad promise from Katy that she will not stop taking her medication no matter what – you manage to discharge Katy after three days.

It took you nearly that long to get her mother on the phone. Mrs. Everdeen was curt with you until you managed to convince her that you were trying to discharge her daughter, and then became… well, not pleasant, exactly, but compliant.

Katy’s admittance clothes still fit her, and she toys with her jeans pocket as she waits beside you in the lobby. Her fingernails clicking against the rivets in the denim is the only sound, echoing in the massive tiled room. Even the ever-present sound of River flipping pages or tapping a keyboard are absent.

Peter didn’t come back.

You know that fact weighs more heavily on Katy’s slowly adjusting mind more than the impending reunion with her family. You’d called him several times, and even let Katy leave a few tearful voicemails, but you hadn’t heard back.

You understand, but you can’t help but resent him just a little bit.

River appears at the revolving doors, ushering in a pale woman and a teenaged girl. As soon as the girl spots you and Katy, her face breaks into a wide grin, and she darts across the lobby to throw her arms around Katy’s ribs.

You let them hug, approaching the woman instead. You offer your hand. “Mrs. Everdeen, I am very pleased to meet you. I just need your signature on a few things over here…” You start towards River’s reception desk while Mrs. Everdeen’s heels click quietly along behind you.

Guiding her through the discharge paperwork is easier than you thought, since she tends to skip most of the legal/medical jargon and go straight to the signature box. You’d estimated maybe five minutes to walk her through it all; but she’s finished before the sisters had even finished their hug.

Katy eyes her mother warily as probably-Primrose lets go. “Mom,” she says stiffly.

“Come on, dear. Let’s go home.” Mrs. Everdeen extends a hand to her daughter, which is ignored as Katy walks alone for the door.

River, already seated behind her desk, raises an eyebrow at you.

Mom and daughter catch up to Katy and walk her outside. Katy turns to her mother and asks, in a sharp and brittle tone, “Why didn’t you ever come see me?”

The revolving doors slide past them before you can hear the excuses.

~ 

You head straight back upstairs and make a beeline for your office. Katy’s departure, while desired, has left an uneasy feeling in your stomach. Before you can reach the sanctity of your office, however, someone’s talking to you.

“Uhh, Doctor?”

It’s Harry.

“Yes, Harry?”

“I… um. Can… you tell Nurse Jade I’m, uh, I want to…”

“You’d like to start your medication again?” you prompt when he trails into silence.

He nods.

“Of course. I can arrange that.” You turn back to your office door.

“And! Um.” He hesitates again, rocking back and forth on his heels like a child with a secret. You wait patiently for him to spit it out. “I… well, can I call Azula today? After dinner?” When you don’t immediately respond, he hurries on to say, “Because, you know, she said I probably could, that the halfway house wouldn’t mind as long as it wasn’t in the middle of the day because most of the girls there have jobs, and… yeah.”

“I’ll see what time she’s available, Harry, but yes, of course you can.”

Relief spreads over his face like sunshine, and then abruptly shrinks back. “And uh, one last thing, I heard… I heard Nurse Minerva talking, and she said something about my godfather being dead.”

You don’t have time to feel guilty before he’s going on again. “And you know I kind of figured, because, he’s Sirius, and I wasn’t… I don’t think I was actually expecting to see him again, but, you know. That means I don’t really have anywhere to go when I leave, right.”

You open your mouth to answer, but he’s off again. “So I was thinking, and, um… I know Azula’s house only takes girls, but when she was leaving she said they have one for boys too that’s nearby, and I was thinking…” He stops midsentence and looks at you helplessly.

“Yes, Harry. If you were well enough to leave Hogwarts, you would likely go to a halfway house as well. I can see if there’s an opening in Azula’s brother house, but you’d have some work to do before you could go there.”

Harry thanks you and goes to his room.

You collapse into the respite of your chair and wonder if things are indeed starting to turn around.


End file.
